COVID-19: 44 Texas University students test positive after spring break trip

Forty-four students of the University of Texas in the US have tested positive for COVID-19 after they returned from a spring break trip to Mexico, avoiding social-distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic. The university, which is in Austin, had previously confirmed only 28 coronavirus cases.

About 70 students flew on a chartered plane two weeks ago amid the coronavirus pandemic to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico for spring break. Forty-four of them have tested positive for the virus and are self-isolating, university officials said on Wednesday.

Since most of the students have returned home after the classes were shifted online, some could have contracted the virus without reporting it to the varsity officials, University Spokesman J B Bird said. Health officials, however, said that some members of the spring break party returned to Austin on separate commercial flights, widening the potential spread of infection.

The Austin outbreak is the latest to result from a group of college students who ignored social-distancing guidelines, went on traditional spring break trips and have now tested positive for the coronavirus. Many of them appeared to be under the mistaken impression that young people are not as likely to get the coronavirus as older people are.

Students at the University of Tampa, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other colleges have tested positive after returning from spring break trips to Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and elsewhere.