COVID-19 Updates for the NYU Shanghai Community

During the weekend of June 11-12, we will provide another update on both building access and plans for the fall. In the meantime, we hope that everyone will use the summer break for some well-deserved rest after an extraordinarily challenging semester.

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community:

Last week we reported that the total number of community-spread cases had fallen to zero. During the past seven days that number has remained steady at or close to zero.  Unfortunately, the Shanghai Health Commission has now determined that the city may not significantly ease restrictions until the total number of new daily infections in quarantine as well as in the broader community is fully controlled.

As our semester comes to a close, the extension of lockdown continues to have a serious impact on our community.  A few notes in this regard:

• We have received reports that some neighborhoods are interpreting city policy in very different ways from others.  While we do not have authority to direct neighborhood committee decision-making, we can try to assist in communicating.   If you are asked to take actions that are in violation of stated city policies, please contact Public Safety at 2059-5500, or contact any of us at the numbers below. We will do all we can to provide assistance.
• The end of the semester means that many of you will soon be leaving Shanghai for the summer. The ongoing regulatory restrictions mean that the process for doing so is not easy. An overview of the process for international students may be found at this link. The student guide is broadly applicable to all international community members, but some adjustments may be necessary for individual circumstances.
• We have received permission to run one of our shuttle buses to the Pudong Airport and to the Hongqiao Airport/Train Station starting on May 15th and continuing daily until public transportation resumes. The shuttle bus may not resolve all transportation challenges, but will assist the large majority of faculty, staff, and students who live in the Jinqiao area or in close proximity to the Academic Building. The shuttle bus will also pick passengers up in Puxi by the IAPM. If you live off campus and will be departing between May 15 and May 22, please complete the survey at this link. If you live on campus you will hear more separately.
• Some of you have asked whether the postponement of the Shanghai gaokao examination will require us to delay the start of the fall semester even further. This fall the first day of classes is not until September 5, and that date is late enough to accommodate the new gaokao delay.
• We are continuing to work with the authorities to ensure that we will be able to reunite in Shanghai this fall. As we have previously indicated, we have put in place a contingency plan to protect any students who are not able to get here, and we will notify the community by July 1 if that plan has to be activated.

This has been an extremely difficult and frustrating semester for our university and our city. As we complete the work of classes and final assignments in this environment, we would like to say once again how grateful we are for the strength and persistence that you have all shown and continue to show.
 
We are Shanghai!

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community:

We are writing now with additional updates on the evolving situation here in Shanghai.   

As we indicated last week, the authorities have been focused on ending community spread in Shanghai and, as we hoped, those figures have now reached zero:

While the city is now moving towards reopening, the lockdown has continued long enough to affect our university’s future plans in two important ways.

The first concerns our commencement celebration for the Class of 2022 bachelor’s degree recipients on May 26.

We are happy to announce that our featured guest speaker at commencement will be Yang Yang (杨扬).Yang Yang won six consecutive overall world championships in short-track speed skating, and two Olympic gold medals. After retiring from competition, she has served as a member of the International Olympic Committee and the International Skating Union, and as vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency. We look forward to hearing her share her thoughts for the Class of 2022.

Unfortunately, it will not be possible for our new graduates to gather live and walk across the stage in person. As was true for the Class of 2020, we will therefore be holding an online graduation ceremony. During the graduation ceremony, some speakers will be speaking live and others will be delivering pre-recorded messages to the new graduates. We look forward to hosting an in-person senior sendoff over the summer. Members of the Class of 2022 will learn more over the next two weeks.

The second concerns our move to the new campus in Qiantan.  

We have been advised by the Lujiazui Group that it will not be possible to complete our new campus in time for us to move this summer. Accordingly, we will continue to have use of the Academic Building and our current residence halls through the entire summer and the fall semester. We will move to Qiantan during the winter break. And we will look forward to celebrating both our new home and our tenth anniversary during the spring semester.

These many weeks of lockdown have been taxing for our entire community in a whole host of ways. As we enter the final two weeks of the semester, let’s all stay strong as we move through the home stretch of this difficult period.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community:

We are writing now to touch base with the community and to share information on the evolving situation here in Shanghai.

As you may know, the authorities have indicated that the objective of the “Dynamic Zero COVID” policy is to end community spread, or infection outside of a quarantine location. The total number of such community infections in Shanghai peaked at 1,364 on April 3. The following graph suggests how soon the policy objective might be achieved if the lockdown continues to have the same effect as it has had over the past three weeks.

Because the trend is in the right direction, the authorities have indicated that some areas of the city may begin to relax restrictions this week. In addition, supply chain and delivery issues appear to be easing in most parts of the city. Still, we are aware that this recovery is uneven and that some services such as non-emergency in-person medical access continues to be difficult. In case of need please contact Public Safety at 2059 5500, and they will do their utmost to assist but please understand that even they cannot always work miracles.

As many of you know, scores of resident assistants, public safety guards, ayis, professional staff in the areas of student life, facilities, human resources, procurement, information technology, and others from across our community have been working tirelessly to ensure that we all have the necessities of life, often at considerable personal sacrifice. The student government, youth league, and many clubs have all been providing online programming to help us manage the challenge of boredom. And professors have shown creativity and compassion as they have worked to help their students manage a variety of challenges while they continue learning, and they will be creative in their approach to final exams.

We have been deeply moved by the spirit of mutual support that so many members of our community have demonstrated over the past month. Most importantly, individual students, faculty, and staff have been reaching out to one another with words of encouragement and support. The three of us want to express our personal gratitude for the kind words that we have received from so many of you.

We are now entering the last three weeks of the semester. Let’s all stay strong as we move through the home stretch of this difficult period.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community,

This has been quite a week, and we are writing now just to touch base with the community.
 
As you may have heard, the city has made modest progress in containing the outbreak and yesterday morning the authorities described the procedure that Shanghai will follow as it transitions out of lockdown. The approach that has been adopted (after everyone receives another PCR test today, the city’s neighborhoods will be divided into three different categories, with different levels of restriction over the next 14 days) means that many people will continue to be in some form of isolation during the next two weeks. See https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/2204094173/.

Given this reality, the university will continue to do all it can to help our community navigate the various procedures. Our public safety team remains on call 24 hours per day as the first point of contact at 2059-5500. If you or anyone in your family tests positive, please reach out to them. And please do not hesitate to call them if you are running short of food, water or other essentials, or if you need medical attention of any kind.  We may not be able to solve problems immediately, but you should not feel that you have to manage on your own.  Please reach out if you need assistance.

We ask that everyone continue to be supportive of one another during these stressful times.
 
Finally, there is a lot of misinformation floating around.  We encourage you to rely on data from official sites only.  Shanghai’s official wechat account is 上海发布 (wechat ID: shanghaifabu), and here are some links to reliable English-language sites:

    https://www.china-briefing.com/news/author/china-briefing/
    https://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/post?kw=Shanghai+Reports
    https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/

Please stay healthy and strong.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community,

We write with important information about how the rest of this semester will unfold at NYU Shanghai, and with a message of support.

The work to bring the current spike in Shanghai under control is proceeding. The city-wide testing scheduled for Monday is an important next step in the effort. At the same time, it is now clear that we will not be able to reopen the Academic Building as early as we once hoped might be possible. For that reason, we are now planning to teach all classes remotely through the end of the semester.

We have been asked if individuals can return home for the remainder of this semester. Given the many restrictions on domestic and international travel, we strongly discourage you from trying to leave Shanghai at least until the current situation calms down. The safest thing to do for now is to stay put.

Our primary concern is to ensure that all members of our community here in Shanghai are safe and able to navigate the various pandemic control procedures. Our Public Safety team is on call 24 hours per day at 2059-5500. They are ready to be the first point of contact for anyone who needs help.

If you test positive (whether via a PCR test or an antigen test) or if you are identified as a close or secondary contact, please observe all requirements of your Neighborhood Committee and contact Public Safety right away. If you are a faculty member, please also contact your dean or area head; if you are a student, please also contact your professor or your advisor.

You should also contact Public Safety right away if you are running short of food, water or other essentials, or If you need medical attention.

If you need further help, you should not hesitate to reach out to any of the three of us at any time. We include our WeChat ID’s and phone numbers below, and if you contact us we will try to connect you with someone who can help you.

We also want to make sure that every single member of the NYUSH community continues to feel that they are not alone. If you sense that a friend or a colleague or a student is down or lonely or otherwise experiencing difficulties, please take the initiative to reach out to them directly. All of us benefit from the opportunity to share how we are feeling with a sympathetic ear even if there is nothing concrete to be done right away.

To all NYU Shanghai students:  As we have noted in our prior messages, our faculty are very understanding of the predicaments that students are facing. The experience of being suddenly called away for testing is widespread these days, and professors will be flexible and supportive of students who have that experience at an inopportune moment. Don’t hesitate to reach out directly to your professor or your adviser if you find yourself in this situation.

This week we are seeing Shanghai take dramatically enhanced (and sometimes burdensome) measures to detect infections and prevent transmission of the virus. Our university is committed to supporting its members as we comply with these measures. At the same time, we very much hope that these measures will be successful in accelerating the completion of this wave. We are continuing to do all we can to return to live activities as a community as soon as possible:

• The Class of 2022 commencement ceremony will still take place on May 26. We will be providing additional information about the format, the featured speaker, etc., as we get closer to the date.
• We are also designing a special set of optional immersive summer experiences for students in the classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025. It is important to us to invent new ways for students in Shanghai to have in-person engagement with classmates from other countries.

It goes without saying that this is a time for all of us to be as helpful to others as we can be. We continue to be inspired by the stories we are hearing of students, faculty, and staff going above and beyond to assist others in need.

We will send additional update messages to the community as we acquire more information and make more plans.  In the meantime, please do stay healthy and strong.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun, Chancellor
Wechat: horse18180505
Mobile: 136 0168 0705

Jeffrey S. Lehman, Vice Chancellor
Wechat: jseanl
Mobile: 186 2107 8555

Joanna Waley-Cohen, Provost
Wechat: joannawc
Mobile: 189 3009 8769

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community,

As we approach the end of our third week of living with BA.2, we are writing with a quick message of Jiayou.

The pivot to a fully online classroom and working or studying from home demands a great deal from faculty, staff, and students, including those who were already joining remotely from overseas. A pedagogy of active learning is much more difficult to implement when there is no one in the same room as the professor. And yet, just as we saw back in 2020, our community has responded with energy and creativity.

Here in Shanghai, the past few weeks have introduced all of us to lockdown life. In some neighborhoods, the restrictions have been relatively light, and in others they have been full quarantines. For everyone, however, the disruptions have been meaningful, as the city works to manage a subvariant that is not very dangerous for fully vaccinated people but that is the most startlingly transmissible version of SARS-CoV-2 so far.

We deeply appreciate the many ways that community members have reached out to help one another. Some NYU Shanghai’ers live in apartment complexes where it has been difficult to bring in food, and they sent care packages to needy NYU Shanghai’ers living in the same complex. Some students have been providing regular WeChat pick-me-up calls to isolated classmates. Many parents have sent words of appreciation to members of our front-line staff, who have gone well above and beyond the call of duty. We feel especially grateful to those NYU Shanghai “essential workers” who are spending many consecutive days working and sleeping on makeshift bedding on campus?

All of us – in China and around the world – are looking forward intently to April 5. That is scheduled to be the end of the Puxi half of the two-phase lockdown. We will also be closing in on three weeks after the serious upward spike began in Shanghai. We expect to learn a lot next week about how things are likely to unfold during the last five weeks of classes and we will be in touch as soon as we have any updates.

This is hard work, over and above what anyone expected. More than ever, we appreciate your patience and resilience in trying times.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           ProvostDear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community,

As we approach the end of our third week of living with BA.2, we are writing with a quick message of Jiayou.

The pivot to a fully online classroom and working or studying from home demands a great deal from faculty, staff, and students, including those who were already joining remotely from overseas. A pedagogy of active learning is much more difficult to implement when there is no one in the same room as the professor. And yet, just as we saw back in 2020, our community has responded with energy and creativity.

Here in Shanghai, the past few weeks have introduced all of us to lockdown life. In some neighborhoods, the restrictions have been relatively light, and in others they have been full quarantines. For everyone, however, the disruptions have been meaningful, as the city works to manage a subvariant that is not very dangerous for fully vaccinated people but that is the most startlingly transmissible version of SARS-CoV-2 so far.

We deeply appreciate the many ways that community members have reached out to help one another. Some NYU Shanghai’ers live in apartment complexes where it has been difficult to bring in food, and they sent care packages to needy NYU Shanghai’ers living in the same complex. Some students have been providing regular WeChat pick-me-up calls to isolated classmates. Many parents have sent words of appreciation to members of our front-line staff, who have gone well above and beyond the call of duty. We feel especially grateful to those NYU Shanghai “essential workers” who are spending many consecutive days working and sleeping on makeshift bedding on campus?

All of us – in China and around the world – are looking forward intently to April 5. That is scheduled to be the end of the Puxi half of the two-phase lockdown. We will also be closing in on three weeks after the serious upward spike began in Shanghai. We expect to learn a lot next week about how things are likely to unfold during the last five weeks of classes and we will be in touch as soon as we have any updates.

This is hard work, over and above what anyone expected. More than ever, we appreciate your patience and resilience in trying times.

We are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community:
 
On March 12, we advised you that we would be closing the Academic Building and moving all classes to online instruction last week and this week. At the end of that message, we promised that we would give you notice this week about how we will be operating next week.
 
We are writing now to advise you that, for the next two weeks (through the April 9 Qingming Holiday), we will continue as we have been: classes will remain online and the Academic Building will remain closed. Our university support services are still in full operation. Please continue to utilize the NYU Shanghai WeChat account for updates and to connect with the school’s different departments.
 
The city of Shanghai has implemented a grid system of mini-lockdowns across the city, in order to ensure that outbreaks of infection with the new BA.2 subvariant are properly contained. Most of us have gone through some period of lockdown, and (as many of us have experienced), some subdistricts have now been cleared of infection and compounds have reopened. But the overall numbers for the city have still not peaked, and, as you know, universities involve so much interpersonal interaction that our sector is always asked to be especially cautious.

We look forward to receiving the go-ahead to resume normal operations once the city as a whole is in the clear. In the meantime, we will continue to operate online. We enormously appreciate the community spirit that permeates NYU Shanghai even while we are unable to gather in person on campus.
 
We will continue to send you updates as new information becomes available.
 
We Are Shanghai!
 
Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost

Dear Members of the NYU Shanghai Community:

We are writing now with important updates regarding campus access, remote teaching and related pandemic measures, in light of new directives from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (SMEC).   

This afternoon, the SMEC announced that all educational institutions with open campuses, including NYU Shanghai, must pivot to remote teaching. This means that, beginning on Monday, March 14, we will be closing the Academic Building and all classes must move to online instruction. If you need to pick things up from the Academic Building and bring them home, please do so on Sunday; beginning Monday, you will no longer be able to enter the Academic Building.

The SMEC has not set a date for when we will return to in-person instruction. However, they have made clear that for at least the next two weeks, we should all adopt the following, more conservative posture.

While the city and the residence halls are not locked down, we all should be trying to stay put as much as possible, so as to minimize our interactions with others. The goal is to avoid accidentally becoming a “close contact” or a “secondary contact” of an infected person. We should be leaving where we live only for essential activities (buying food, walking dogs, medical appointments, etc.). We should not be taking trips, going to restaurants, bars, or shopping malls, or meeting with others in groups.

When we do interact with others, we should all be fully masked and distanced. And once we get home, we should wash our hands.

Two special points for those students who are living in the residence halls:

•     If your family lives in Shanghai, please do not shuttle back and forth between your family home and your residence hall room. If you went home over this weekend, you should plan to stay there during this two-week period. If you stayed in your residence hall room, please plan to stay there.
•     To confirm that dorm residents have not accidentally become infected, we will periodically provide additional  PCR tests for all students at the residence halls as requested by the SMEC.

We recognize that these changes are disruptive to all our lives. We are very grateful for how rapidly and efficiently everyone responded to Thursday’s call for a change in approach. More than 1,800 tests were given in about three hours, and we all tested negative.  We ask that everyone maintain a spirit of patience and flexibility as we move ahead.

In particular, please note that we will be adopting the same relaxed Pass-Fail rules for all students that we adopted during Spring 2020. Any student may take any course that is being taught from Shanghai Pass-Fail, they may take as many such courses Pass-Fail as they wish, and the deadline for electing to take such a course Pass-Fail is May 3.

We hope that the authorities will successfully curb the current COVID wave in Shanghai, and that we will be able to relax these restrictions following two weeks of vigilance. In any case, we will give you notice during the week of March 21 about how we will be operating the week after.

Thank you again for your continued spirit of calm adaptation as we continue to respond to the situation around us.

We Are Shanghai!

Tong Shijun        Jeffrey S. Lehman       Joanna Waley-Cohen
Chancellor          Vice Chancellor           Provost