On Tuesday Southwestern College announced that the school will temporarily close and shift to online classes or distributed instruction Monday, March 16, at least until spring break ends on March 29, due to concerns regarding the spread of coronavirus.
“The situation is evolving and we’re trying to interrupt the transmission which is why we’re doing this two-week sort of social distancing,” SWC communications associate Ernesto Rivera said.
Over the course of the last week, University of California San Diego, San Diego State University and other California colleges and universities have also shifted to online classes in an effort to practice social distancing.
As far as what happens after March 30, Rivera said it’s too early to say, but SWC is committing to making another announcement March 23 to let students know what the following week will look like.
Large public events at all SWC campuses will be canceled and athletic events will continue as scheduled without spectators, according to Rivera. The library and classrooms will not be open to students.
“It’s a difficult time and we understand that not everyone is going to have access to their own personal resources at home and we just ask them to work with their instructors to work creatively,” Rivera said.
According to the San Diego County Health Department, a woman in her 50s who traveled overseas is the first presumptive positive case of COVID-19 in the San Diego region and San Diego’s general population is still at a low risk for contracting the virus.
On Tuesday Chula Vista city staff announced a citywide working group to implement preventative and protective measures for city staff and the public, and presented an action plan.
The action plan includes educating city employees on proper hygiene and sanitation, executing emergency contracts with sanitation vendors to increase the frequency of cleaning in high use facilities, and installing 15 handwashing stations throughout the city.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors also announced the creation of a subcommittee on Tuesday to deal with the Coronavirus outbreak, led by Supervisors Greg Cox and Nathan Fletcher.
Additional preventative measures the county has taken include placing 86 hand washing stations throughout the county, creating a website, coronavirus-sd.com, to provide information in multiple languages to the public, and increasing outreach to the homeless community through service providers and the Regional Task Force.
