Coronavirus Forces Cambridge to Hold Most Classes Online Next Year: Live Coverage
Cambridge University announces that it will hold all lectures online for the next academic year.
Cambridge University on Tuesday became the first British university to move all student lectures online for the entire upcoming academic year, underscoring the far-reaching changes the coronavirus is forcing on higher education institutions around the world.
The 800-year-old university said in a statement that it was “likely that social distancing will continue to be required” during the next academic year, which begins in October and concludes in the summer of 2021. The university said that the decision will be reviewed if official coronavirus guidance changes.
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“Lectures will continue to be made available online and it may be possible to host smaller teaching groups in person, as long as this conforms to social distancing requirements,” the university said.
That suggested that other important aspects of teaching, such as tutorials and smaller group classes, might be permitted to take place face-to-face. The authorities believe that these sessions could be possible with participants sitting at a safe distance from each other.
Colleges and universities around the world, largely forced to end in-person instruction in the most recent term, are studying whether and how to move forward with classes next year.
In the United States, for example, some schools are bringing students back with pledges to test them and track infections.
Others are not holding in-person classes at all: California State University, the largest U.S. four-year public university system, said classes would take place almost exclusively online this fall, with some possible exceptions for clinical classes in the nursing program or certain science labs. In Canada, McGill University in Montreal and several other schools have said they will offer most of its courses online in the fall.
Other schools are considering adapting in other ways, including having fever checkpoints at entrances to academic buildings, one-way paths across the grassy quad and requiring face masks in classrooms and dining halls.
In Britain, the pandemic has also threatened the finances of some universities because of the drop in the number of international students expected in the fall.
Tom Moore, the 100-year-old former British army officer who raised $40 million for Britain’s National Health Service by walking 100 laps of a patio next to his garden, is set to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, an honor that completes his transformation from media sensation into national hero.
He was recommended for a knighthood by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the government will announce the honor on Wednesday.
“Colonel Tom’s fantastic fund-raising broke records, inspired the whole country and provided us all with a beacon of light through the fog of coronavirus,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement. “On behalf of everyone who has been moved by his incredible story, I want to say a huge thank you.”
Mr. Moore’s campaign, which he began a few weeks before his 100th birthday, caught fire after it was posted on an online charity service. It became a hugely popular good-news story in a country especially hard-hit by the pandemic.
Mr. Moore, who served as a captain during the Burma campaign in World War II, has already received several awards for his achievement, including being named an honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College.
He said in an earlier interview that he wanted to recognize those on the front line, “just as we were backed up” during World War II.
People arriving from the United States played a significant role in spreading Covid-19, a nationwide genomic study of Israeli cases has found.
The analysis, led by biologists at Tel Aviv University, sequenced the genomes of virus samples from a randomly chosen, representative group of more than 200 patients at six hospitals across the country and then compared those to samples sequenced worldwide.
The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, called into question the Israeli government’s decision to admit travelers from the United States until March 9, though visitors from some European countries were barred as early as Feb. 26.
While only 27 percent of all travelers who tested positive for the virus had arrived from the United States, more than 70 percent of virus samples sequenced had originated there.
Had American travelers been barred just as fast, the researchers concluded, “a substantial fraction of the transmission chains in Israel would have been prevented.”
The study also found that so-called superspreaders in Israel have been unusually potent: While, with many viruses, 20 percent of patients are often responsible for 80 percent of cases, researchers said, the Israeli coronavirus data showed that only five percent of patients were responsible for spreading the disease to 80 percent of those ultimately infected.
Israel has reported 16,650 cases and 277 deaths linked to the coronavirus.
The study also suggested that the country is nowhere near achieving herd immunity, said Dr. Adi Stern, its lead author. According to a statistical model the researchers developed based on the genetic sequencing, no more than 1 percent of the population has contracted the virus, she said.
On the bright side, the study estimated that slamming the door on tourists, enforcing social-distancing rules and imposing a lockdown on citizens cut the virus’s rate of transmission in Israel by two-thirds. Dr. Stern said it highlighted “how important it is to follow quarantine measures wherever possible, and to close borders.”
President Trump’s angry demands for punitive action against the World Health Organization were rebuffed on Tuesday by the organization’s other member nations, which decided instead to conduct an “impartial, independent” examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a four-page letter late Monday, Mr. Trump had threatened to permanently cut off U.S. funding of the W.H.O. unless it committed to “major, substantive improvements” within 30 days. It was a major escalation of his repeated attempts to blame the W.H.O. and China for the spread of the virus and deflect responsibility for his handling of a worldwide public health crisis that has killed more than 90,000 people in the United States.
But representatives of the organization’s member nations rallied around the W.H.O. at its annual meeting in Geneva, largely ignoring Mr. Trump’s demand for an overhaul and calling for a global show of support in the face of a deadly pandemic.
The outcome left the United States isolated as officials from China, Russia and the European Union chided Mr. Trump over his heated threats even as they acknowledged the need for a review of how the W.H.O. performed as the virus spread from China to the rest of the world.
The resolution approved by W.H.O. members without objection promised a “comprehensive evaluation” of the organization that would review “experience gained and lessons learned from the W.H.O.-coordinated international health response to Covid-19.”
Foreign policy experts said Mr. Trump’s attacks on the W.H.O. provided a strategic opening for China, which announced on Monday that it would spend $2 billion in the global fight against the pandemic, and served mainly to undercut the interests of the United States by angering its closest allies.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Tuesday that the border between his country and the United States would remain closed for at least another month after the two countries reached an agreement to extend its closing.
Recently, several Canadian provincial leaders have said that they oppose a rapid reopening of border. The outbreak in the United States is much more severe; the United States has reported about 463 cases per 100,000 people, more than double Canada’s number.
Mr. Trudeau said at a news conference that the closing had protected people on both sides of the border. He added that American officials had been “completely open” to the extension.
Mr. Trudeau declined to speculate on when the measure might be permanently lifted.
“Every step, we have to make the right decisions based on the circumstances,” he said.
The measure has caused some frustration, particularly among spouses who have been separated by its restrictions.
A crushing cyclone barreled up the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday, heading for a swampy stretch along the border of India and Bangladesh and threatening to unleash 165-mile-an-hour winds and massive floods when it makes landfall on Wednesday.
The power of the storm is not the only threat, as the cyclone, Amphan, nears coastal areas. It also poses a risk to the coronavirus response as hundreds of thousands of people begin moving toward emergency shelters.
In the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the authorities have fewer shelters to work with because many have been turned into Covid-19 quarantine centers. Officials were struggling to evacuate people and prepare for flooding and destruction while still under a partial lockdown. Some shelters were being filled to only 50 percent capacity for fear of spreading coronavirus in dense quarters.
Meteorologists said the cyclone, which is expected to pass over Kolkata, one of India’s biggest cities, was weakening as it moved closer to land, but could intensify overnight.
In Bangladesh, officials said the storm could bring slashing rains to the muddy, wooden shacks of about a million Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar. Those refugees fled ethnically driven massacres in Myanmar in 2017 and have been rendered stateless, stuck in limbo in squalid camps that have been flooded time and again.
For Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, debating in Parliament used to be a raucous affair, as backbenchers from his Conservative Party booed his rivals and cheered him on like a classmate in a schoolyard brawl. These days, to his evident chagrin, it is more like a legal deposition.
Facing off in a quiet chamber against the lawyer-turned-opposition leader, Keir Starmer, Mr. Johnson has had to endure a forensic weekly grilling on his handling of the coronavirus. The social distancing of Parliament means that most of the 650 members take part remotely, turning a gladiatorial arena, in which Mr. Johnson was once a big cat, into Mr. Starmer’s courtroom.
Mr. Starmer, 57, has deployed all his courtroom skills against his adversary, starting with a prosecutor’s technique of trapping the witness with a question to which you already know the answer.
“Can the prime minister tell us: How on earth did it come to this?” Mr. Starmer asked two weeks ago, after noting that Britain’s death toll was among the highest in the world.
Mr. Johnson replied that direct country-to-country comparisons were not valid, and that the true human cost of the pandemic could only be judged after the fact.
Leaping out of his seat, Mr. Starmer noted the government had made exactly those comparisons for weeks, when Britain’s death toll looked comparatively better. Mr. Johnson’s argument, he concluded, “just doesn’t really hold water.”
Her friends had posted all over social media: The milk tea shops had reopened! Wuhan was coming back!
But when Rosanna Yu, 28, took a sip of her first order in two months, she was unimpressed. “Did you guys forget how to make milk tea?” she posted jokingly on WeChat in late March. “How is it this bad?”
Still, disappointing milk tea is better than none. And while normalcy and good bubble tea may still be out of reach, just the prospect has Ms. Yu feeling buoyant.
She recently took a video of the long line at a local restaurant for takeout “hot dry noodles,” Wuhan’s signature dish. She has to pause for traffic before crossing the street — a burden that has never felt less like one.
“Seeing a lot of cars, I’m actually so happy,” she said.
Her optimism is born, in part, of luck. None of her friends or family were infected. The lockdown was hard at first, but she distracted herself by learning to bake crullers and sweet buns.
Some things are undeniably harder. Ms. Yu quit her job as a secretary last year, planning to look for a new one in January. But her parents now want her to wait until the fall, for safety reasons.
She rarely sees friends, because there is nowhere to go; dining in at restaurants is not allowed.
But for the most part, Ms. Yu has embraced Wuhan’s new normal. She plans to keep baking. She may take online classes.
And she has a new kinship with her neighbors. During the lockdown, residents who were barbers offered free haircuts. The neighborhood’s group chat, formed to coordinate bulk grocery buys, has became a virtual support circle.
“This was my first time feeling like the entire neighborhood, and all of Wuhan, was all in something together, working toward the same goal,” Ms. Yu said.
As Italy further loosened Europe’s first lockdown against the coronavirus and allowed restaurants, bars, churches and stores to open, Lucilla Vettraino went directly to her hair salon.
“I look like a witch with this hair!” Ms. Vettraino, 78, said on Monday as she held strands the color of Campari.
And perhaps nowhere is that passion for primping as sharply felt as in Italy, where — amid fights between the national and regional governments, concerns about a resurgent epidemic and fears of a coming economic catastrophe — Italians greeted Monday’s opening as a chance for a Great Beautification.
Italy is a capital of coiffuring, with 104,000 hair salons and tens of thousands more beauty parlors for nail care, eyebrow threading, body waxing and massaging, according to a government study by the agency representing the Chamber of Commerce.
On Monday, Italy allowed unlimited travel within individual regions, and permitted businesses to open up across most of the country. Many restaurants decided not to open because rules requiring tables to be 6.5 feet apart would make it impossible to turn a profit. But the salons had customers.
A government-owned airline in the United Arab Emirates flew coronavirus aid for Palestinians from Abu Dhabi to Israel on Tuesday, marking what is believed to be the first direct commercial flight from the Emirates to Israel.
The Etihad Airways flight appeared to be another indication of the growing openness between the Emirates and Israel, which do not maintain formal diplomatic relations, though both view Iran as a regional foe.
At least three Israeli ministers have attended events in Emirati cities in the past two years and Israel is slated to participate in a major world fair in Dubai next year.
Etihad’s plane, which did not bear the company’s logo, landed at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv just before 10 p.m., said Ofer Lefler, a spokesman for the Israel Airports Authority.
The flight was carrying 14 tons of personal protective equipment, 10 ventilators and other materials to help Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in their fight against Covid-19, said Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.
The aid will be collected by the U.N.’s World Food Program at the airport, Mr. McGoldrick said, adding that Palestinian officials, in cooperation with U.N. organizations, would determine how to distribute it.
Mr. McGoldrick said that regional sensitivities about coordination between the Emirates and Israel did not present an obstacle to arranging the shipment.
South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, and his wife, Angelina Teny, who serves as defense minister, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Reuters news agency reported on Monday.
A number of his office staff and bodyguards also tested positive, the agency reported.
Appearing on state television, Mr. Machar said that he would self-isolate for 14 days in his residence, according to Reuters.
Two years South Sudan gained independence from Sudan, a civil war broke out when Mr. Kiir, who belongs to the majority Dinka ethnic group, fired his deputy, Mr. Machar, who belongs to the Nuer ethnic group. That war has since cost an estimated 400,000 lives and ignited Africa’s biggest refugee crisis in years.
The United Nations said last week that two people at a crowded displacement camp run by the organization had tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Reuters. The camp is home to nearly 30,000 people.
In all, fewer than 2,000 working ventilators have to serve hundreds of millions of people in public hospitals across 41 African countries, the World Health Organization said, compared with more than 170,000 in the United States.
Quarantine has become a way of life for millions of people around the world. Now, books will be isolated, too.
Waterstones, a British bookstore, said it will set aside books, or any other item plucked from its shelves, for at least 72 hours when its stores eventually reopen, in order to minimize the risk of spreading the virus.
James Daunt, the chief executive of Waterstones, said in an interview on Tuesday that customers who pick up a book — but don’t buy it — will be asked to put it on a trolley. The items in the trolleys will then be taken to the back of the bookstore and left there “for a couple of days,” he said.
Bookstores around the world have tried to adapt. Some have offered free curbside pickup or delivery. Others have reconfigured their layouts to keep people apart.
Mr. Daunt said he did not know when Waterstones would reopen. But he said customers would be provided hand sanitizers and made to socially distance.
“There will be a very limited number of customers we’ll allow at any one time,” Mr. Daunt said of his bookstores.
Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son and the heir to the British throne, has urged people across the nation to join a government campaign aimed at finding farm labor to “pick for Britain” and save the season’s crops as the country faces a dearth of migrant workers.
“If we are to harvest British fruit and vegetables this year, we need an army of people to help,” Prince Charles said in a message that was broadcast on Tuesday.
“Food does not happen by magic,” he said, adding that the crucial work would be at times unglamorous and challenging.
George Eustice, the British cabinet minister responsible for food and farming, said last month that Britain had just one third of its typical migrant agricultural work force because of the coronavirus lockdown.
Germany, whereas many as 300,000 migrant workers from Eastern Europe would usually arrive to harvest asparagus, pick strawberries and plant late-season crops, has its own solution: It is allowing farmers to airlift workers from Romania and Bulgaria. The farmers must organize and pay for charter flights, and the program was capped at 40,000 workers a month in April and May.
The move has eased the labor shortage, but not solved it. The cost and logistical challenges have meant that only about 28,000 workers have been flown in so far, well short of the number needed. It has also raised concerns about importing infections and exploiting vulnerable workers.
Wang Zhigang, China’s minister of science and technology, spoke on Tuesday at one of the first in a series of ministerial news conferences ahead of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, which begins on Friday.
“We developed the testing kits from the beginning, but it may take a little longer and may have a lower sensitivity,” he said. “We are gradually improving it in the process of later use and adding new technical elements, solving the problem: high sensitivity, fast detection.”
China has had a separate series of scandals in recent years regarding fraudulent academic research, although none so far regarding the coronavirus. Mr. Wang volunteered at the end of his news conference that while he believed almost all Chinese researchers to be honest, the authorities would respond with the full force of the law if another scandal did take place.
“For a few people, they are not worthy of the name of scientists, we have zero tolerance for them,” he said.
Just a week after many schools were reopened in France, the discovery of 70 coronavirus cases in classrooms across the country forced the authorities to shutter some preschools and elementary schools.
The cases are spread throughout France, from Brittany in the west to Nice in the south, in the latest example of the challenge faced by European countries in reopening their societies while seeking to avoid new waves of infections.
The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said Monday that such developments were “inevitable,” but that the cases remained a minority among the 150,000 pupils who returned to schools last Monday.
“The consequences of not going back to school are much more serious,” Mr. Blanquer said on RTL radio.
Although schools have not been seen as a major source of outbreaks in Europe, countries that eased restrictions last week, like France and Spain, are keeping careful watch for signs of a spike in coronavirus cases.
The first students in Britain may return to school on June 1, and Gavin Williamson, the country’s education secretary, has used the example of Denmark, whose pupils were the first in Europe to go back to schools in mid-April, to argue in favor of reopening.
Museums and galleries across Europe have started to reopen, but the disruption isn’t over yet.
The Venice Biennale announced on Monday that it was postponing two of its main international exhibitions: The architecture biennale will now open in May 2021 instead of this month; the next biennale of contemporary art has been pushed to April 2022 from May 2021.
The delay to the architecture biennale became inevitable, organizers said, as the pandemic shuttered architecture studios and universities, and as participants came to terms with health regulations and travel restrictions.
“I hope that the new opening date will allow them first to catch their breath, and then to complete their work with the time and vigor it truly deserves,” said the organizer, the Lebanese architect Hashim Sarkis. “We did not plan it this way.”
The list includes Shakespeare’s Globe, a London theater which opened in 1997 as a full-scale replica of the 1599 original where many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed.
“Despite being well managed, well governed, and — crucially — able to operate without public subsidy, we will not be able to survive this crisis,” the Globe said in a submission to a British parliamentary committee published on Monday.
The Globe’s comments appeared days after Matthew Warchus, the artistic director at the Old Vic, another famous London theater, said that it faced “a tough and even perilous year ahead, fighting for our survival like so many others in the cultural sector.”
The crisis for cultural institutions is not limited to Europe. Carriageworks, a major art space in Sydney, said this month that it had been forced into voluntary administration after lockdown led to “an irreparable loss of income.”
And in Singapore, a well-known independent cinema, the Projector, has been appealing to the government for support, according to Karen Tan, a former investment banker who co-founded the venue.
“Planning for uncertainty is the most challenging bit, given that we’ll be opening into an uncertain landscape,” she said.
On April 14 in a residential neighborhood of Kawasaki, Japan, Takehiro Shimada did the unthinkable. He turned off the lights and locked the doors of the 7-Eleven he has owned and operated for over 20 years.
It is a relief for store owners who were already putting in grueling hours for meager returns before the virus struck and have since watched business dry up as Japan’s workers sheltered at home under a state of emergency.
“This is the chance for people to shorten their hours,” Mr. Shimada said during a recent video call from his crowded stockroom. “The emergency declaration is the reason, the best possible reason.”
As Japan moved last week to lift that declaration across much of the country, however, some franchisees were wondering if the change of heart would outlast the pandemic.
Reporting was contributed by Andrew Jacobs, Adam Rasgon, Stephen Castle, Mark Landler, Ian Austen, David Halbfinger, Mihir Zaveri, Karen Zraick, Iliana Magra, Hisako Ueno, Ben Dooley, Sameer Yasir, Jeffrey Gettleman, Jason Farago, Mike Ives, Elian Peltier, Jason Horowitz, Elisabetta Povoledo, Emma Bubola, Megan Specia, Steven Erlanger, Aurelien Breeden, Katrin Bennhold, Christopher Schuetze, Andrew Jacobs, Michael D. Shear, Edward Wong, Anatoly Kurmanaev, José Maria León, Safak Timur, Melissa Eddy, Dan Levin, Maria Abi-Habib, Keith Bradsher and Victor Mather.
