On January 6, 2022, the Vice Chancellor office sent an email announcing their plan to begin in-person classes from Jan 28, despite the prevalence of Omicron in California. Although they require all students and faculty to obtain the vaccine booster by January 31th, that does not prevent the spread of Covid-19 to students, faculty, and their families and friends.
Now UCI community is increasing hundreds of cases every day. If UCI insists on in-person classes, especially in classes with hundreds of people, the risk of infection will be greatly increased. The school's solution is for asking students to take PCR tests 72 hours before returning to campus, wear masks, and get booster shots. But we must know that in a confined space, no matter how much distance and how many masks you wear, there will be a great risk of infection. omicron is a highly contagious virus. Once a person is infected, it may infect dozens people or even hundreds of people. And even if the booster shot is given, there is a great risk of infection.
On this Tuesday and Wednesday, the number of infections across California reached more than 100,000, and the Vice Chancellor of student affair ’s email also said "finding a "testing positivity" rate over 13 percent". In the absence of offline classes, it has been so many students and faculty infected, the number will only be higher once offline. And students and faculty may not be able to study and teach well because of infecting COVID. Besides, the consequences of contracting COVID are actually very serious. In addition to sequelae such as asthma, cough, and dizziness, more importantly, it is likely to suffer from mental problems.
Therefore, in order to provide a safer and better environment for students and faculty, UCI should consider continuing to maintain online classes in the winter quarter.