COVID-19 is a threat to the health of the Rutgers University student body and faculty members. With the newly identified positive cases in New Jersey (6 cases as of March 8) and New York across the Hudson River from Stevens (105 cases as of March 8) , the well-being of Rutgers University is threatened. If the RU campus hesitates and does not shut down immediately, COVID-19 will spread throughout the campus before it can be stopped, thereby endangering the lives of all students and faculty members.

An infected individual may take up to 14 days to show symptoms of COVID-19, therefore the newly identified cases may have already started spreading in the community. Rutgers University needs to close the campus for at least two weeks and use online teaching tools to protect the students and faculty members. An example of the exponential increase of COVID 19 cases can be found in Italy, where the amount of people infected rose sharply from ~20 cases to 7375 in about three weeks.

There is a severe lack of mass testing for COVID-19 in both New York and NJ, There is a confirmed case (as of March 8) in Hudson County, the county from which many Rutgers Students Commute from. There have also been confirmed cases in Bergen county, a neighboring county. Furthermore, the Hoboken path terminal is a hotspot for commuters traveling to and from New York City- which also has 13 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

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