Duquesne University to bring Rome campus students back to U.S.

Duquesne University is making plans for students at its Rome campus to return to the United States after the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention on Friday evening raised the caution level against travel to Italy because of the growing coronavirus threat there.

None of the 59 American students at the Italian campus has fallen ill, according to university spokesman Gabriel Welsch. He said Duquesne officials had decided “that if and when a nation reached CDC Level 3, the university would cancel pending trips and arrange for the return of any students, faculty and staff from that nation.”

The CDC on Friday did raise the travel warning for Italy to Level 3, advising against nonessential trips to the country and citing “limited access to adequate medical care” in areas affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

The Associated Press notes that Italy has reported 888 cases of coronavirus, the most of any country outside of Asia, while CNN reports at least 17 deaths in Italy have been attributed to the virus.

Cases in Italy “have been associated with travel to or from mainland China or close contact with a travel-related case, but sustained community spread has been reported in Italy,” the State Department said in its related travel advisory. “Sustained community spread means that people have been infected with the virus, but how or where they became infected is not known, and the spread is ongoing.”

Duquesne is working with students to make travel arrangements and has cancelled a planned spring break trip that was to have left for Rome on Saturday morning, Welsch said.

The university notes that its Rome campus is on an enclosed 15 acres of property owned by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, in the city’s Boccea neighborhood.