Campus on lockdown

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THE University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae, Morobe, has locked down for 14 days in response to suspected Covid-19 deaths of academics at the campus over the weekend.
The lockdown started yesterday.
The university’s administration said on Saturday, that it lost its first national professor and head of the department of mechanical engineering and following that, on Sunday, it lost again another mechanical engineering lecturer.
The Unitech administration said the actual cause of their deaths are yet to be confirmed at this stage but said they both developed symptoms of the Covid-19 prior to their deaths.
“As an interim precautionary measure, the management has decided to suspend all classes for two weeks and impose a total lockdown starting yesterday for another two weeks,” the administration said.
In a statement, the Unitech administration said during this period, the university would implement other preventive measures to halt a possible widespread of community transmission of the Covid-19 on campus.
The interim measures now imposed by the management at the Taraka campus were;

  • MANDATORY wearing of masks by students, staff and dependants while on campus with no one allowed in public spaces without a mask;
  • STRICT social distancing (maintaining a 1.5m spacing) and regular use of hand sanitisers; and,
  • AREA 5 gate will be locked for the next 14 days, staff, students and dependants will provide valid IDs to access the gates and all gates will be locked by 10pm.

The administration said there would be hand sanitisers and water basins provided at all academic departments and service units during the lockdown for clean hands practices and the use of hybrid mode of conducting classes online.
It said the one of week classes that were scheduled for week seven of the semester would be rescheduled and incorporated into the teaching plans of the second half of the semester.
Meanwhile, the Unitech administration appealed to all to comply strictly with the directives issued and urged all not to be irresponsible and ignorant of the risk faced by the university community.

One thought on “Campus on lockdown

  • We had a third death (lecturer) last night (05/April). It is not known whether all this death are caused by Covid. Facts are yet to be established.
    In a time frame of 3weeks, we lost five lectures. This deaths are unusual, hence a lockdown for facts to be established.

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