The University of Alabama is having what they call “unacceptable rise” of COVID-19 cases after welcoming students back to campus six days ago.
via Complex:
Up to this point the Tuscaloosa campus (a.k.a. the main one) has tallied 531 total confirmed cases. Other university locations in Birmingham and Huntsville have a combined 35 positives.
The school’s COVID dashboard reports an at-the-moment low positivity rate of 1.2 percent, stating that the 566 persons who’ve been hit with the virus were learned about after 46,150 tests were issued.
Still, that’s a lot of people, and in an effort to avoid the same fate (or something worse) than Notre Dame and UNC, Alabama President Stuart R. Bell asked for students/faculty to team up “at this critical moment” to prevent the disease from spreading further.
That means that Bell has urged common remedies, including wearing a mask, social distancing, and preventing gatherings from getting too large.
“Completing the fall semester together is our goal,” he said in an email addressed to students on Sunday. “The margin for error is shrinking.”
In addition to asking nicely, the university will also go the enforcement route by having school and city police monitor off-campus residents, restaurants, and Greek housing, to see that people at those locations are following guidelines.
To combat the rise in cases, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox also ordered the city’s bars to shutdown for two weeks.
At this point, if colleges are holding in-person classes their only response to COVID-19 is “if you get sick, you get sick.”
