Coronavirus: TN colleges, businesses restrict travel as they study abroad
The deadly coronavirus has not yet reached Tennessee, but the threat of the escalating outbreak is now being felt at college campuses and businesses across the state.
Several Tennessee universities are reconsidering sending students to China on study abroad trips, and some of the state’s prominent companies say they face shipping delays and employee evacuations in the region where the outbreak is most severe.
The University of Tennessee announced Wednesday it will cancel all spring semester study abroad programs in China, recalling one student who already arrived. Both Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College said they will more strictly review approval of any school-sponsored travel to China.
At Belmont University and Middle Tennessee State University, officials are considering cancelling study abroad trips to Asia scheduled for this summer. MTSU spokesman Jimmy Hart said trips like these take months to plan and coordinate, so the officials feel the need to make a final decision as soon as next week.
“We have to make the decision pretty early on if the trip is going to go forward,” Hart said. “And if the situation worsens, it will be a pretty easy decision to call it off."
Most likely, the situation will get worse. The coronavirus outbreak, which is centered in the sprawling Chinese city of Wuhan, has killed more than 100 people and sickened thousands since last month. The virus has spread to 19 countries, including five confirmed cases in the United States, but most of the outbreaks remain in China and the Pacific Rim, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
The Chinese government attempted to quell the outbreak by extending the Lunar New Year holiday through this week, allowing residents to stay home and avoid exposure. However, the lengthened holiday has disrupted Chi
nese manufacturing and is expected to send ripples through economies worldwide.
Fedex, Katom report some fallout from outbreak
In Tennessee, some of those ripples have already arrived.
Fedex, which is based in Memphis but does business around the world, said some shipments passing through the Wuhan region may be delayed. The company said it is also disinfecting Fedex facilities in areas where coronavirus has been found.
Nissan, with North American headquarters in Franklin, said it will evacuate some Japanese employees from a Wuhan manufacturing plant. Asurion, an international phone insurance company in Nashville, said it has restricted non-essential business flights to China and barred its Asian-pacific employees from China or Hong Kong.
Katom Restaurant Supply, headquartered outside of Knoxville, said the outbreak cut their source of Chinesemade refrigeration and kitchen appliances, forcing the company to search for new sellers in India and Vietnam.
Katom President Patricia Bible said she expects a massive shipping backlog once the Lunar New Year ends and manufacturing in China restarts.
“There will be merchandise sitting at the shipping ports, possibly for weeks, waiting on containers. It’s a domino effect,” Bible said.
“And we are living off the stock we had in house, which is fortunately quite large, but that’s going to run out really quickly."
Other Tennessee companies that rely on international trading — including Jack Daniels, Bridgestone Americas and Autozone — said the outbreak had not impacted their operations at this time. Dollar General, based in Goodlettsville, which has spoken publicly about importing products from China, did not respond to a request for comment.
Coronavirus outbreak endangers study abroad programs
The coronavirus made its first mark on Tennessee colleges last week with a scare in Cookeville. State health officials announced a Tennessee Tech University student was being tested after exhibiting "mild" symptoms, but the student ultimately tested negative.
Since then, colleges across the state — many of which promote study abroad programs as a valuable experience — have had to reconcile the risk of sending students to China.
Owen Driskill, a University of Tennessee spokesman, said Wednesday the decision to suspend study abroad programs in China effects 21 students, but that the school would “make other arrangements to complete their academic work.”
Only one of those students has already traveled to China. The student is far from Wuhan and plans to return to the United States, Driskell said.
At MTSU, where officials are still weighing cancellation, about eight students are scheduled to study Hangzhou Normal University starting in May. The university is nearly 500 miles from Wuhan, but school officials want to act in an “abundance of caution” when faced with a fast-moving outbreak, said Hart, the university spokesman.
Hart said MTSU also reluctantly cancelled two concerts by Chinese musicians, the Jinling Dragon Ensemble and the Zhou Family Band, at campus events. None of the musicians had shown any signs of illness, Hart said, but the university was responding to rising concerns from students and their parents.
“It’s not ideal,” Hart said. “We love bringing in these kinds of performances.”
April Hefner, a Belmont spokeswoman, said the university does not currently have any students studying in China but has a study abroad program planned to go to Beijing and Hong Kong this summer. In light of the outbreak, this program is being reconsidered and “at this point appears unlikely to occur," she said.
Two other Middle Tennessee colleges, Lipscomb University and Austin Peay State University, said none of their programs had been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.
Commercial Appeal reporters Laura Testino and Katherine Burgess and Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Monica Kast contributed to this reporting.
Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.