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    Campuses Move Against SARS with Information, Other Measures

    By VIC COX

    The Association of Pacific Rim Universities was to gather on campus this August, but SARS-related precautions cancelled that event. Thus far, no other UCSB meetings or conferences have been dropped due to concerns over Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, according to Miki Swick, manager of Campus Conference Services.
    In general, people traveling from parts of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam to this country are asked to monitor their health for 10 days by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) because of large numbers of SARS cases reported in those countries. Even Toronto, Canada, has had a small outbreak of the respiratory disease, which can kill if not properly treated in a timely fashion.
    The UC Office of the President has urged faculty, staff, and students to "postpone all nonessential travel to SARS-affected countries" and administrators to "strongly consider suspending or postponing upcoming programs" that host students from these same nations or regions. Decisions about how to implement these suggestions are being left up to individual campuses.
    At UCSB, current information on whether or not SARS is affecting campus activities, and where to go for authoritative updates on the disease, is available on the campus home page <www.ucsb.edu>, which links to the Student Health Service site. Other useful Web sites, particularly for summer travelers, are the travel advisories issued by the CDC at <www.cdc.gov/travel>. With an incubation period of 10 days for the SARS virus, the CDC's list of restricted regions and countries can change quickly.
    After UC Berkeley said it would cancel admission of some 500 students from SARS-affected countries who had been accepted for Summer Sessions or Extension classes, it retracted its exclusion of Singapore's students. The reason: No new SARS cases had been found in Singapore since April 14, the CDC announced on May 6.
    Vietnam was an earlier example of successful containment of the virus, causing the CDC to replace a restrictive travel advisory with a travel alert that emphasized personal monitoring.