Harvard University announced Tuesday the school has canceled all in-person classes on campus and has switched their entire graduate and undergraduate programs to online in response to an impending coronavirus outbreak.
The school said they've already told students not to return to campus after Spring Break, saying they're hoping to have completed the transition to an online curriculum by March 23.
"We are transitioning over the course of the next few days to non-essential gatherings of no more than 25 people," the university said in a statement.
One Harvard professor tweeted his prediction that no colleges or universities would be holding in-person classes two weeks from now due to the spread of the potentially deadly illness.
The idea that Harvard switch to online classes seemed like an overreaction 5 days ago. Today we made the obviously right decision to ask our undergraduates not to return after spring break. I don’t think anyone in the US will be sitting in a university classroom 2 wks from now.
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) March 10, 2020
Harvard joins several other colleges and universities who’ve shut down their campus to avoid a school-wide pandemic. Ohio State University also announced this week that the school has canceled all in-person classes until March 30 after the state announced they’d confirmed three cases of coronavirus.