Cornell Shuts Down Ithaca Campus as COVID-19 Cases Surge 20x in a Week

Cornell University has announced that its Ithaca, New York campus will shut down following a rapid surge in COVID-19 cases among students.

As NPR reports, the school announced on Tuesday that it had recorded 469 student cases of COVID-19 for the week starting Dec. 6, with confirmed cases of the omicron variant detected. In total, 3 percent of the students who took COVID-19 tests at the school tested positive for the coronavirus. That’s a 23-times increase in cases from the previous week. In a letter published on the Cornell University website, Cornell president Martha E. Pollack confirmed that all finals were to go online and all on-campus events in the immediate future have been canceled.

"Since our Saturday message, our surveillance testing has continued to identify the rapid spread of COVID-19 among our student population. While faculty and staff case numbers currently remain low, just last evening our COVID-19 testing lab team identified evidence of the highly contagious Omicron variant in a significant number of Monday’s positive student samples," Pollack wrote. "As a result, and out of an abundance of caution, the university is moving to Alert Level Red and announcing a number of immediate measures."

It was cautioned that evidence linking these cases to the omicron variant, which is believed to be more transmissible, is preliminary. "While I want to provide reassurance that, to date, we have not seen severe illness in any of our infected students, we do have a role to play in reducing the spread of the disease in the broader community," Pollack added. University relations vice president Joel Malina told NPR that cases so far have only been found in fully vaccinated individuals, and some of those have already gotten a booster shot.

It is unclear when the university plans to reopen its Ithaca, New York campus, but the university said all staff must be vaccinated by Jan. 18.