Dear campus community,

With Salt Lake City’s announcement that the city will transition to a Yellow restrictions status on Friday, Sept. 4, 2020, we want to give our campus an update on what that means for us.

The University of Utah will continue in its current Orange restrictions status at least through Oct. 10, the last day of our planned two-week “circuit breaker” shift to online-only classes.

Throughout this period, our emergency management, facilities, and academic leadership teams will continue to review and provide information about appropriate policies and protocols that will guide our operations at the University of Utah.

Class formats, for example, will not change. Our schedule will remain the same through the end of the semester. We also will continue to follow the basic hygiene practices—use of face coverings, physical distancing, frequent hand washing, and staying home when ill—that have worked so well to date to keep COVID-19 cases in check on our campus.

One note about face coverings: Even with the transition to the Yellow restrictions phase, Salt Lake County’s public health order requiring face coverings remains in place through Jan. 5, 2021, and thus still applies to Salt Lake City. The county has said that if data indicate face coverings are no longer necessary it will consider lifting the order sooner.

For our campus, face coverings will continue to be required in buildings and where physical distancing is not possible.

Our Project Orange and other teams will share more information about any possible transition from the Orange phase in the coming weeks and this information will be shared on coronavirus.utah.edu.

We want to offer thanks to our students, staff, and faculty. Together, we have successfully launched the Fall 2020 Semester due to our shared commitment to do what we can to protect the health and well-being of all members of our campus community. We need to keep working together so we can stay together. Let’s be the university that gets this right!

Ruth Watkins
President

Mike Good
Senior Vice President for Health Sciences

Dan Reed
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs