ABILENE, Texas — According to McMurry President, Dr. Sandra Harper, the board approved to fund the purchase of COVID-19 rapid tests to administer to the entire McMurry population back in December. Dr. Harper says it will be a pre-requisite before students and staff can return to campus on January 19th.
"We felt like that was important particularly because of the high degree of community spread in Taylor County and the state of Texas and the country, this is different than we did in the fall but thats because we have 9x the cases we did in the fall," said Dr. Harper.
Dr. Harper says, they will also continue some of the safety measures they had in place during the fall semester.
"Having a healthy roster, daily screening, social distancing, we have designed all of the classrooms so they are socially distanced, mandatory mask-wearing and no external meetings on campus in January and February and a variety of limitations on numbers of people in meetings, etc." said Dr. Harper.
According to harper, under the Cares Act, the university will be reimbursed for some of the funds that paid for the covid-19 mass testing and they look forward to welcoming their students back.
"You know we are excited about the spring semester but we are committed to keeping our community as safe as we possibly can during this global pandemic." said Dr. Harper.
McMurry University to require students and staff to test for COVID-19 before returning for the Spring semester
“We felt like that was important because of the high degree of community spread in Taylor county the state of Texas and the country” said McMurry President.
