Marist shuts Italy site, citing virus
College urges 163 students in Florence to return, self-quarantine for 2 weeks
Marist College is closing its campus in Florence, Italy, for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester due to the outbreak in that country of
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that’s making its way around the world and has claimed more than 3,000 lives.
Marist, the main campus of which is in Poughkeepsie, has 163 students studying in Florence and is encouraging them to come home. The college did not report any cases of the virus among the students.
In a letter posted online, Marist President Dennis Murray said the college “has made the difficult decision to suspend all operations
at our Florence campus for the spring 2020 semester and encourage the students there to return to the U.S.”
Murray said the college “is supporting these students in a number of different ways, including assistance with travel.”
“After they return to the U.S.,” he wrote, “we will contact each of them individually to plan their coursework for the rest of the spring semester, either online or through directed study. We are committed to ensuring that all students remain on track for their anticipated graduation timelines.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Italy, and Murray said the returning students will not be allowed to visit any Marist-operated site in the U.S. until after a self-quarantine of 14 days in which they show no signs of illness.
He also said students who live in the in the residence halls on the Poughkeepsie campus, as well as elsewhere in the surrounding area, should not host any Marist students returning from Florence during the 14-day period.
Locally, Murray wrote, the college “is taking additional steps to protect the Marist campus, including ensuring that each building has hand-sanitizer stations in the lobby, distributing ... [hand] wipes in offices across the college, and providing our housekeeping staff with the same peroxide-based cleaner that hospitals use to disinfect their facilities.”
“We are also assembling an emergency preparedness team made up of senior officials from around the college and medical doctors,” he wrote.
Marist has created a web page, marist.edu/coronavirus-updates, on which it is providing updates about the virus and how it relates to the college’s operation.
The COVID-19 strain of the coronavirus first turned up in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019 and has spread to more than 60 countries since then. There have been about 90,000 cases confirmed around the world and more than 3,000 deaths, mostly in China, according to The Associated Press.
There are about 100 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., and six people in the state of Washington have died from the illness, AP reports. New York state so far has only one confirmed COVID-19 patient — a woman in New York City who apparently contracted it in Iran.
“After they return to the U.S. we will contact each of them individually to plan their coursework for the rest of the spring semester, either online or through directed study. We are committed to ensuring that all students remain on track for their anticipated graduation timelines.”
— Marist President Dennis Murray, in a letter posted online