A week after its first day of classes, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced it will be shifting all undergraduate classes remotely amid several outbreaks of COVID-19 on campus.
Starting Wednesday, all undergraduate in-person instruction will go digital for the rest of the fall semester, Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and Executive Vice Chancellor Robert A. Blouin said in a letter to the school on Monday.
The school leaders said the "current data presents an untenable situation."
In the past week, from Aug. 10-16, the campus' positivity rate increased nearly fivefold, from 2.8% to 13.6%, officials said. During that period, there were 130 new confirmed cases in students and five in employees, according to the school's COVID-19 dashboard.
As of Monday morning, 177 students were in isolation and 349 in quarantine both on and off the campus. Most students who have tested positive have had mild symptoms, officials said.
Residential halls, which began move-in on Aug. 3, have been hotbeds of virus activity. On Sunday, the school announced its fourth cluster of COVID-19 cases in three days. Three clusters -- which refers to five or more cases in close proximity -- were found in residence halls, while the fourth was discovered at a fraternity. The school has not released the exact number of cases in each cluster, citing privacy laws.
Cases in Orange County, in which the university sits, have been on the rise since Aug. 11 as well, following a gradual decline since early July. There are 1,475 confirmed cases as of Monday, according to the county.
The school leaders said they made the decision "in consultation with state and local health officials, Carolina's infectious disease experts and the UNC System."
"We know that these trends aren't just affecting our campus: They have escalated the concerns of our neighbors, co-workers and friends in and around the Chapel Hill and Carrboro communities," Guskiewicz and Blouin said. "The health and well-being of the good people of our greater Carolina community are just as important to us as that of our students, faculty and staff."