Clemson University to switch to on-line instruction

Increasing local and area COVID case numbers are believed to be linked to the return of college students, and now Clemson University has decided that after the Thanksgiving break, it will     move to online-only instruction.  That’ll cover the last two weeks of the fall semester.  The final day of regular on-campus classes will be Tuesday, November 24.  The university’s health strategy team projects the need to quarantine or isolate at least 200 students in the first week after the holiday break in the event that students return to the campus after the holiday.  The university strongly encourages all students to not return to campus or the surrounding communities after Thanksgiving break.  Students with personal circumstances can request an exception to remain in their residence hall.  Clemson is now looking at January as a return date, but specific plans for that are to come later.  In a separate announcement, the university uses the word “robust” to describe its testing strategy and says that has been supplemented this week by additional capacity through saliva-based testing.  In three days of this expanded saliva testing, 1,599 tests have been processed.  Ninety-five percent of results were returned the same day of the test.  When fully operational, the lab is to be able to test 5,000 samples daily and return the results same day.