New York: The City College of New York (CUNY) and the State University of New York (SUNY) will on March 19 start implementing distance learning for the rest of the spring semester, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“We are also announcing that CUNY and SUNY starting March 19 will move to a distance learning model,” Cuomo said.
The measure was enforced to reduce the density and the spread of the virus in New York City, where a total of 48 COVID-19 cases had already been confirmed, Cuomo said.
CUNY is the largest urban university system in the United States, with 26 campuses in New York City, enrolling more than 275,000 students. SUNY has 64 campuses across the state, with a total of 424,051 students.
On Tuesday, CUNY said via Twitter that a student from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, located in Midtown Manhattan, had tested positive for the COVID-19. The school announced its closure on Wednesday.
Among other measures implemented in the state to contain the outbreak, Cuomo announced on Tuesday the deployment of National Guard troops to a Health Department command post in New Rochelle, Westchester County, and created a one-mile radius “containment area.” The area is now considered a “cluster” with 121 confirmed cases of the novel virus.
The total number of people who contracted the virus in the United States now stands at 1,054, with 31 deaths.