The Critical Incident/Crisis Operations Team at University of Limerick continues to meet regularly to monitor the spread of COVID-19 and prepare our institution and our community.
There will be a daily status update on UL’s institutional social media sites and on the UL homepage to ensure our community can access accurate up to date information. This is necessary as a result of a number of false reports which have circulated over the weekend.
The University is fully operational at present and we continue to rely on every individual to take personal responsibility for their own health and that of our entire campus community. We strongly endorse preventative measures, which have been published and extensively circulated by the HSE and are available here.
While we have no reports of a positive test of COVID -19 among any of our community, this may well change in the coming weeks. Any need for partial or full closure of the UL campus will be communicated to our community across multiple platforms and contingency plans will be made clear at that stage.
We understand that many members of our community are anxious about the spread of the virus, and as such, we are not mandating students to attend lectures. However, our advice is that the University is open and fully operational with no changes to class schedules at present.
At this point, there are only a limited number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection nationally, so the risk of acquiring the infection is small. It is worth keeping in mind that in young people the virus is most likely to be mild akin to the flu without any long-term consequences.
Any individual who feels ill should avoid contact with others and not come to university. This is in line with normal practices when people develop a cold or flu.
The objective of UL is to safeguard its staff, students and the general public. Therefore, we will take the appropriate steps to prevent the spreading of the virus.
It is impossible to plan for every eventuality in this fluid situation. Safety is our priority but we intend to address the practical implications of a closure or partial closure of the Campus. The situation is being monitored daily by Executive Management and we will communicate as soon as possible the relevant aspects of our response.
In all advice to date, there is an emphasis on personal responsibility to arrest the spread of the virus. The advice, issued by the HSE & Department of Foreign Affairs, has been well publicised over the last few weeks and should continue to be be closely heeded.
For more, see https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/coronavirus.html.