Colorado Mesa University President Tim Foster asks students to self-quarantine with the exception to attend class, get food, or to exercise/self-care in an email sent out to the campus community.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, Foster sent a message in an email explaining that the Campus Alert Level has been upgraded to “Yellow.”

The message further elaborated that in cases of getting food, students should utilize grab-n-go options from dining services.

Foster’s message also noted that these suggestions are designed to allow students to safely return to their families for Thanksgiving break two weeks less than two weeks from now.

Along with these measures, CMU has also increased the hours and capacity of the campus testing site, added additional staff and volunteer resources to their Contact Tracing efforts and has suspended several extracurricular campus activities, including the Outdoor Program and Athletics.

All of these preventative measures came into place after last week with both Mesa County and CMU saw a spike in COVID-19 cases.

On Friday, Nov. 6, the CMU had 124 positive COVID-19 tests for the week. This is almost four times higher than the 32 positive cases in the week of Oct. 10 through Oct. 16, which was the previous most positive cases in one week.

Foster’s full message can be found here.