Three UC campuses extend remote instruction until end of January

Three University of California campuses said Thursday that they will continue to hold classes online only until the end of January amid a surge in Covid-19 cases across the state.

The Davis, San Diego and Santa Cruz campuses announced that classes will be held remotely for three more weeks and now plan to resume in-person instruction on Jan. 31. Davis was previously planning to resume in-person classes on Monday after holding them online this week — the first week of the winter quarter. The San Diego and Santa Cruz campuses previously planned to return to in-person instruction on Jan. 18.

“We had hoped that our award-winning COVID response program would allow us to resume in-person instruction on Monday, but based on what we’re seeing with positivity rates related to the omicron variant, as well as staffing and operational concerns, we have decided that it is most prudent to continue remote instruction for three more weeks of winter quarter,” UC Davis Chancellor Gary May said in a message to the campus Thursday.

UC’s four other undergraduate campuses that are on the quarter calendar — Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside and Santa Barbara — plan to hold classes remotely through the end of next week and resume face-to-face instruction on Jan. 18, though administrators have said those plans could change.

At the system’s two semester-based campuses, Berkeley and Merced, instruction for the upcoming term doesn’t begin until Jan. 18. Merced plans to hold classes remotely for the first week. Berkeley is still planning for all classes to be in person.