Cornell shuts down campus and cancels graduation ceremony over omicron outbreak

Graduation and exams postponed as cases investigated

An Ivy League university has asked students, teachers and visitors to stay away from campus amid warnings of a localised outbreak of the omicron variant of Covid.

Martha E Pollack, the president of Cornell University, said in a statement that omicron had been found at the Ithaca, New York campus on Monday.

While an investigation into the outbreak of omicron is preliminary, the university said, many changes were announced as a result of the finding.

It includes the closure of on-campus fitness centres and libraries, and the rescheduling of exams for online, next week.

Sports competitions have been cancelled for Sunday, while a number of offices and labs remain open, the university told students and staff on Tuesday.

A December graduation ceremony, which was due to take place at the campus on Saturday, has also been cancelled.

It remains unclear when the event will take place.

“It is obviously extremely dispiriting to have to take these steps,” Ms Pollack said in the statement. “However, since the start of the pandemic, our commitment has been to follow the science and do all we can to protect the health of our faculty, staff and students.”

The alert level for the Ithaca campus has also been raised to its highest level, red – and students are asked to test negative within 48 hours of visiting or leaving the facilities.

Masks are also required, the university said. And asThe New York Times, reported roughly 97 per cent of students at Cornell University are vaccinated.

Many students and members of staff are due to travel home for Christmas at the end of the week, amid reports of omicron across the US.

The country’s death toll from Covid has meanwhile passed 800,000, and fewer than 70 per cent of the whole US population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.