UTAS will not yet close its doors amid emerging coronavirus fears

Following news of university closures across the world, the University of Tasmania has been busy preparing to shut its doors.

Professor Rufus Black, Vice-Chancellor, University of Tasmania. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

The University of Tasmania is prepared to shut down if need be, vice-chancellor Rufus Black said.

Speaking this morning, Professor Black said they had been anticipating a potential since about January.

“We’re busy being able to prepare to do as many of our courses as we can online. At the moment there are all but about 112 units, so particular subjects, that we would be able to deliver up online. It’s obviously been quite a bit of work to achieve that,” he said.

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“When we start getting person to person transmission in Tasmania, then we will be able to move to that model and we will move to it early so that we’re reassuring people that they can keep doing their studies to the greatest extent possible.”

Though universities throughout Europe had begun closing their doors, Professor Black said many European countries had substantial person-to-person transmission but we weren’t yet seeing that in Tasmania.

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“The advantage of not going until you need to is you can maintain normal operations for people as long as you can,” he said.

He said for everybody it would become a “whole new world of complexity” to manage.

“The longer we can maintain normality and calm, because the risk level actually hasn’t changed, the better for people’s ability to, when the need comes, to be able to manage what will be a complex time.”

Yesterday details came to light about the movements of the state’s third confirmed case of the virus.

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The woman in her 30s spent time at the university’s Sandy Bay campus and Morris Miller Library on Monday and Tuesday and also visited the campus’ Lazenby’s Cafe.

Professor Black said they were unaware if the woman was a university student.

“Public Health have kept that confidential, so we’re not aware of whether that’s a student or not,” he said.

Professor Black said they were not concerned over a rise of deferments or dropouts due to a potential shut down.

“That’s not one of the things that comes into our calculations,” he said.

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