As health officials continue to identify new cases of the novel coronavirus here in the US, outbreaks in places like Italy and China are exploding on an even larger scale. As a result, the University of Nevada, Reno just announced it was calling students who are studying abroad back home.
Several students will be returning from Italy, while three students who’d been planning to go to South Korea were put on hold. And a summer program in China was cancelled, too.
UNLV is taking similar precautions, relocating students who had been sent to China and canceling other programs for the spring semester.
Alyssa Nota is President and CEO of the University Study Abroad Consortium at UNR. She said about 17 students in programs in Italy and South Korea have been impacted but students in other programs have not been impacted so far.
"We are currently monitoring all the different programs that we have," Nota said, "We have over 50 programs around the world and so we're monitoring every country daily to see what the situation will be."
She said students who were in China when the outbreak started will be able to transfer to classes on the main campus or to another study abroad program, but the students in Italy were already half-way through their semester, so they are being offered a refund for the missed months or an option to finish online.
"They are quite disappointed unfortunately that we had to make this very difficult decision but the health and safety of our students is always our number one priority," she said.
She said when the students return home they will have to follow the guidelines outlined by the CDC for people who have traveled to Italy, South Korea, Japan, China, and Iran, which includes a 14-day self-quarantine.
Nota is not sure when the study abroad programs will be back. She said her office is monitoring information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department to decide when programs can resume.
Alyssa Nota, President and CEO, University Study Abroad Consortium at UNR.