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Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill:Go online as default for Fall semester,restrict on-campus housing I The Progressive Pulse THE PROGRESSIVE PULSE . , EDUCATION, Orange County Health Director to UNC-Chapel Hill: Go online as default for Fall semester, restrict on-campus housing it By Joe Killian ❑ 13 days ago rl 1 Comment ❑ In COVID-19, Education, Higher Ed, News The Orange County Health Director has urged the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to move to online education as the default for the Fall semester and to restrict on-campus housing as the COVID-19 pandemic in the county worsens. Health Director Quintana Stewart made the recommendations in a July 29 letter to UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. As of this week, UNC-Chapel Hill is moving forward with in-person classes. Thousands of students began moving into residence halls this week in a full-capacity dorm plan that the Centers for Disease Control considers to be Ohighest risk.0 In the letter, Stewart expressed concern over signs that student returns have already contributed to spikes and clusters of infections. From the letter: To date, Orange County has been home of approximately 1,241 lab confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and 45 deaths. Over the past month we've watched our daily case count nearly double with record highs in early July of 38 new cases per day. We've also seen an increase in cases for those in the 18-24 age group (22%) and the 24-49 age group (37%). While the data reports that our local cases appear to be stabilizing the last couple of weeks, we at public health know this is not a totally accurate picture of what is happening in our community. As the State moved into Phase 2 and things began to open up, we saw an increase in our cases. As students have begun to return to campus prior to the http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/...e-county-health-director-to-unc-chapel-hill-go-online-as-default-for-fall-semester-restrict-on-campus-housing/[8/18/20,8:36:31 AM]