The COVID-19 death toll in the United States has surpassed 190,000, while the number of recorded infections has climbed above 6.3 million, the latest data from Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed on Wednesday.
The exact death toll now stands at 190,478, while the number of confirmed cases reached 6,351,623, according to the university's data.
The COVID-19 death toll in the United States has surpassed 190,000, while the number of recorded infections has climbed above 6.3 million
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. The US remains the worst-hit nation, both in terms of the number of cases and death toll.
As more U.S. universities and colleges try to reopen with in-person instruction, outbreaks, student parties and pushback from instructors and students are threatening their plans.
More than 51,000 cases have been reported at more than 1,000 campuses. Some students have faced serious consequences for breaking the rules. Northeastern University in Massachusetts dismissed 11 students last week for violating safety precautions. New York University, Ohio State, Purdue and West Virginia University have all suspended students over violations of rules intended to curb the virus’s spread on campus.
On Monday, W.V.U. said that it was moving all undergraduate courses online through Sept. 25 at its Morgantown campus, following reports of parties held over the Labor Day weekend that surfaced on social media.
Coronavirus testing at the university has found a growing number of cases, including 112 new positive results between Aug. 30 and Sept. 3. Against that backdrop, the reports of parties prompted officials to take action. In a statement, the school’s dean of students, Corey Farris, asked students who traveled home for the weekend to stay there and not return to campus yet.
Two of the parties that raised concern were held Friday and Saturday nights by the school’s Theta Chi fraternity chapter, in apparent violation of orders from the university that members living in the fraternity house isolate or quarantine themselves after one member tested positive. The university announced on Saturday that 29 members of the fraternity had been issued immediate interim suspensions.
Another Theta Chi chapter, at the University of New Hampshire, was placed under interim suspension over the weekend after 11 coronavirus cases were linked to an Aug. 29 party attended by more than 100 people, according to a letter from the university’s president, James Dean, who called the party “reprehensible.”
At the University of Michigan, a labor union representing graduate-student instructors and assistants said it would go on strike Tuesday over virus safety and other concerns.
The union, GEO, submitted a letter signed by 1,800 people to university administrators calling for a “safe and just pandemic response for all,” including the right to work remotely. The letter also demands that the university sever its ties with the Ann Arbor Police Department and ICE, arguing that the university’s decision “to expand the policing of our community in a perverse effort to enforce social distancing” would be harmful to mental health on campus.
Rick Fitzgerald, the university’s assistant vice president for public affairs, said that most of the union’s demands were “not appropriate” now, and that a strike would violate state law as well as the union contract. The university intended to hold classes in any event, he said.
A student group at the University of Kansas, where there are nearly 500 cases, is planning a “strike” to push the university to move to remote learning, The Kansas City Star reported; this follows a similar “sickout” last week at the University of Iowa.
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