Isabella Kwasnik, a senior at Harvard College, spent part of Tuesday engrossed in a typical form of college stress: sitting for a midterm exam. But there was something else pressing on her mind. She had just learned she would have to soon leave campus — perhaps for good.
Harvard joined a growing number of colleges and universities that announced a major shift to remote learning on Tuesday, canceling all in-person classes and, in some cases, asking students not to remain on campus, as a sense of urgency about the coronavirus gripped the nation.
“You spend four years at a university, and you work incredibly hard and expect that at the end you can tie a bow on it and wrap it up,” Ms. Kwasnik, 21, said, as students across campus fretted about logistics, fumed over what they saw as a chaotic evacuation and even threw one last party. “But there’s this unexpected outcome,” she said. “It’s just a logistical and emotional nightmare.”
The number of colleges and universities canceling in-person classes has escalated in recent days, expanding beyond the West Coast and the New York City region. By Tuesday afternoon, a flurry of colleges across the country had announced similar moves, including American University in Washington D.C., Syracuse University in upstate New York and Rice University in Houston.
The Ohio governor on Tuesday recommended that all universities and colleges in the state move online, a change that was already in motion at Ohio State University, the sprawling school based in Columbus that serves 68,000 students.
The changes, which came as many schools anticipated students traveling all across the country and world over spring break, represent a massive shift that is likely to transform the experience of college in the United States for the foreseeable future.
On some college campuses, student life was grinding to a halt and students were scrambling to make last-minute plans to live elsewhere. Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., encouraged students to move home for the rest of the semester. Anyone who remains on campus “should expect very few student activities,” the university said on Tuesday.
Nearly 1,000 people in 36 states and Washington, D.C., have tested positive for the coronavirus, with the number of known cases growing rapidly. Tuesday was the eighth consecutive day with more confirmed diagnoses than the previous day.
The outbreak has most severely affected nursing home patients and older Americans, but college campuses and high schools have announced some cases, and the rapid spread of infections has encouraged schools of all kinds to take extraordinary measures.
The Fulton County school system, which covers the suburbs of Atlanta, did not hold school on Tuesday, becoming the largest U.S. school district to do so, after an employee tested positive.
In the Seattle area, which is experiencing a severe outbreak, a suburban K-12 school district was the first in the area to move all of its classes online. The setup meant that students as young as second grade were working on card tables in their bedrooms, and parents were folding laundry while keeping one eye on virtual classes.
But colleges seemed to be leading the way in the national experiment with remote learning, with many schools set to start virtual instruction after spring break, lasting at least through the end of March. That raised a number of questions — from housing and finances to international visas, and even meals for low-income students who rely on them.
There were also practical classroom matters.
Courtney Silver-Peavey, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student, teaches biological science classes at Ohio University, which announced on Tuesday that all in-person classes would be suspended. “A lab — you can’t do that online. You can’t dissect a brain or conduct an evolutionary experiment,” she said. “As students and staff, it puts us in a weird situation.”
The decision also came as a surprise to Sierra Hicks, 23, a graduate student at Syracuse, who had received an email earlier Tuesday saying classes would continue as normal. Hours later, the university announced it had decided to move to online learning starting after spring break.
Ms. Hicks, who is from Severna Park, Md., said she was quickly making plans to move home after spring break and grappling with several questions, including the potential loss of pay from her job on campus.
“It is very alarming to see how quickly things have changed over a short period of time knowing things may only get worse,” she said.
Nursing home officials urged drastic changes across the U.S.: Family members ‘should not be visiting.’
In an urgent warning that the coronavirus poses an extreme risk to elderly and infirm people, nursing home industry leaders on Tuesday recommended an unprecedented curtailing of social visits in the thousands of nursing homes and assisted living centers in the United States.
The recommendation comes with the support of the federal government, after an outbreak of the virus in nursing homes in the Seattle area. Five long-term care facilities have been hit with cases, including a facility in Kirkland, Wash., which has been associated with 19 deaths from the virus.
“The mortality rate is shocking,” said Mark Parkinson, president and chief executive officer of the American Health Care Association. He said that the death rate might well exceed the 15 percent been reported in China for people aged 80 and older.
The challenge of the virus “is one of the most significant, if not the most significant” issues the industry has ever faced, he said.
Industry officials recommended that nursing home reception workers screen all visitors — family, staff, contractors and government officials — and allow only essential visitors. “Do you need to be in-building to operate” the facility?” said Dr. David Gifford, the health care association’s chief medical officer.
As for family members, he said, “Our recommendation is they should not be visiting.”
Anyone who does visit, he said, should be screened carefully at reception and anyone who has signs of illness should be turned away.
Thousands of people who traveled on a contaminated cruise ship will be quarantined.
The task of unloading passengers from a coronavirus-contaminated cruise ship continued on Tuesday, with officials ushering some of the thousands of people who had been stranded at sea for days into quarantine.
The ship, the Grand Princess, docked in Oakland on Monday, days after 21 people on board the ship tested positive for the virus. Those passengers were quickly taken off the ship and put in “proper isolation,” Vice President Mike Pence said at a news conference at the White House on Monday.
Now, officials are working to transfer the 2,500 or so other passengers on board.
U.S. citizens are expected to be taken to military bases around the country for a 14-day quarantine, a process that Mr. Pence said would be done in “very, very carefully controlled environments.” Foreign passengers will depart on charter flights home.
The spread of infection on the ship also raised questions about the health and safety of crew members, many of whom hail from poorer countries. While all passengers on the Grand Princess will disembark, most of the about 1,100 crew members will remain on the ship for quarantine.
Concerns are growing for the homeless, who are particularly vulnerable.
Medical researchers say the 550,000 people currently homeless across the United States are more susceptible to contracting the disease caused by the coronavirus because of the cramped quarters in shelters, the sharing of utensils and the lack of hand-washing stations on the streets.
Chronically homeless people also often have underlying medical conditions and lack reliable health care, meaning that, once infected, they are far more likely to get very sick or die. One study last year found that 30 percent of homeless people had chronic lung disease.
“We should be very worried,” said Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist in Seattle, which has high rates of homelessness. So far, none of the more than 100 confirmed cases in Washington State have been among the homeless population.
Several cities in California have large homeless populations that are vulnerable to an outbreak, as do Austin, Texas; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; and Washington D.C.
Detroit offers free water to make sure people can wash their hands.
Health authorities say hand washing is critical to limiting the spread of the novel coronavirus. But what if you don’t have running water at home?
This week, the city of Detroit, where 3,000 households had their water shut off last year because they had not paid their bills, announced that residents could have their water service restarted for no cost for the first month and keep it on for $25 a month after that, as long as the coronavirus remains a threat. The program is also available to people who have received notices saying they are at risk of service interruption. Michigan has not had anyone test positive for the virus so far.
Advocates who have called for a moratorium on water shut-offs in Detroit praised the step, while saying that it underscored the need for a long-term solution to the water shut-offs.
As testing ramps up in the U.S., there is now a new option: drive-through.
Drive-through testing clinics — first pioneered in South Korea — have now popped up across the United States.
In Lebanon, N.H., a mobile medical truck was set up in an airport hangar last week to provide tests for people who might have come into contact with two hospital employees who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, Valley News, a local newspaper, reported.
The University of Washington School of Medicine also set up a drive-through clinic last week to test for the coronavirus, which has caused at least 20 deaths and dozens of infections in the Seattle area. The university turned one of its hospital garages into a clinic that allows people with ties to the university to get tested without leaving their cars.
“This is a totally new concept said Dr. Seth Cohen, the medical director of infection prevention and employee health at Northwest Hospital in Seattle.
The testing clinic serves 40 to 50 staff members per day who have symptoms of the coronavirus, including a dry cough, fever or shortness of breath. They are tested for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, as well influenza A and B and R.S.V., a common respiratory virus that usually causes coldlike symptoms.
Dr. Cohen said that academic and medical institutions across the country had reached out to his team to learn more about the drive-through clinics. They can reduce interactions between potentially infected people and health care workers and are considered a much faster method of testing. At the Seattle clinic, someone can be tested every five minutes, and results are produced within 24 hours.
Kate Taylor, Matt Richtel and Thomas Fuller contributed reporting.
