KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — University of Tennessee Interim President Randy Boyd—in consultation with chancellors at UT Knoxville, UT Chattanooga, UT Martin and the UT Health Science Center—has announced that all in-person classes beginning March 23 will be temporarily suspended until further notice as a proactive measure in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
UT Chattanooga will suspend in-person classes until March 30, while UT Knoxville and UT Martin will suspend in-person classes until April 3. UT Health Science Center will assess its online options within the next 10 days and communicate directly with its campus community. Clinical rotations in hospitals will continue as usual.
While there are no reports of active confirmed cases involving COVID-19 on any University of Tennessee campus, there are confirmed cases in Tennessee.
“Our top priority is the health and safety of our students,” Boyd said. “We are taking this preventative measure with all of our campuses that provide face-to-face instruction out of an abundance of caution.”
Each campus will be sending out specific communications to their faculty, students and staff regarding the details of the suspension and any online accommodations that will be made.
“While we do not want to create undue anxiety on our campuses, we firmly believe that suspending our in-person classes is a prudent and important measure to take given the current COVID-19 situation,” Boyd said.
The UT System recently announced a comprehensive resource guide that provides information and resources surrounding COVID-19: tennessee.edu/coronavirus/.
In December 2019, the global health care community identified a new respiratory virus that originated in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, and has since been labeled 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization—previously it was referred to as 2019-nCoV). Spread of coronavirus is correlated with circumstances of close and sustained contact with others who are infected.
Coronavirus in Context:
The majority of people who have coronavirus will get better without any long-term effects, according to an Oregon doctor. About 80% of cases tend to be mild. In these cases, symptoms diminish over five to seven days, although people are still capable of transmitting the disease. But there are many people with a higher risk of having a more severe disease if they are diagnosed with coronavirus, including those with heart disease, diabetes, asthma and other vascular disease problems.
Also, most children who get it have mild symptoms.
WHO officials said March 9 that of about 80,000 people who have been sickened by COVID-19 in China, more than 70% have recovered and been discharged from hospitals.
Patients are typically released when they test negative twice for the virus within 24 hours, meaning they’re no longer carrying the virus, although some countries may be using a slightly different definition, that may include when people have no more respiratory symptoms or a clear CT scan.
The World Health Organization said it could take considerably longer for people to be “recovered,” depending on the severity of disease.
Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief, said it can take up to six weeks for people to fully recover from COVID-19 infections, which could include pneumonia and other respiratory problems in serious cases. He said the numbers of reported patients have not always been systematically provided to World Health Organization although the U.N. health agency is asking every country with cases for further information.
To put the coronavirus numbers in context, millions of Americans get the flu every single year and there are thousands of flu deaths annually.
Since October 2019, the CDC estimates around 32 million Americans have gotten the flu. That’s one in every 10 Americans.
