By Kiana Dulan | Staff Writer

With registration opening for students on November 16th, UH President David Lassner announced in a system-wide email that class instruction will continue to primarily be online with on-campus instruction saved for labs, clinical experience, studios, and shops.

Lassner assures these classes will be taught following CDC guidelines with social distancing, facial coverings, and sanitization protocols. As for faculty and staff, telework policy remains the same along with UH campuses being closed to the public.

He extends the same common sentiment of wanting to return to life before Covid, but maintains the health of students, faculty, and staff as a priority.

With a total of 59 Covid cases since April 2, UH-Mānoa reports a minimal amount of outbreaks across their campuses like other universities have across the country. According to the New York Times, Florida has 16,001 cases among all their universities with 5,008 of them originating from the University of Florida, .

According to the CDC, Hawaiʻi nationally ranks among the lowest amount of cases with 5.1 in the past week per 100,000 of those tested. North Dakota tops the charts with 176.9 cases. Hawaiʻi Collaborative Data shows that there have been 85.7 cases in the past week with a total of 16,841 overall across the state.

With local cases being comparatively low, Lassner hopes for a large student return in Fall 2021, expecting classes to be a mix of in-person, hybrid, and online instruction. 

“If there is one thing we have learned through this pandemic, it is that we must continue to be flexible and adapt to changes that are not under our control,” Lassner said.