From: The Law COVID-19 Preparedness Committee
To: Berkeley Law community
Date: Friday, March 6, 2020
Dear Law School Community,
We continue to carefully monitor information concerning the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Our paramount goal is to protect the health of our faculty, staff, and students. But at the same time, we are trying to maintain normal law school activities as much as possible. We wanted to provide some additional information:
Events Staging and Planning
Although our events are continuing, there are increasing numbers of guests notifying us that they do not want to or are prevented from traveling to California, due to our declared state of emergency. Event organizers will need to decide whether to proceed in light of the situation. Also, at some point, campus and/or health authorities might impose restrictions on events on campus.
Event organizers are responsible for communicating directly with their participants about travel restrictions and self-quarantine requirements. The UCOP policy may be made more stringent by the health department, but as of today people arriving from level-2 AND level-3 countries should NOT be present on campus until after a 14-day self-quarantine. Currently designated level-3 countries are Mainland China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran; level-2 country is Japan (see https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices). We are seeking clarification on implementation and enforcement.
Prevention
We have expanded the number of hand sanitizer stations throughout the law complex. Each of us should take the time to clean and disinfect our own high touch surfaces, such as phones, desks, keyboards, keys, and door knobs.
Please stay up to date on prevention and treatment protocols from the Centers for Disease Control: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html
Maintaining Community
COVID-19 brings with it collective challenges that must be dealt with as a community. We ask everyone to follow our Principles of Community and learn more about stigma and how to correct it with facts and information provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For University and School of Law updates, please see https://news.berkeley.edu/coronavirus/, https://uhs.berkeley.edu/coronavirus-covid-19-information and https://law.berkeley.edu/covid-19.
Please keep in mind that containment measures focus on protecting those among us who are most vulnerable to serious infection. We are collectively responsible, no matter our role or standing, to create and maintain an environment built on respect and free from discrimination. Be generous with those around you, particularly if their measures for dealing with the outbreak differ from yours.
–The Law COVID-19 Preparedness Committee