Members of the Boston University community traveling to areas affected by SARS cannot return to campus until 10 days after their return, according to an email advisory on the subject.
The advisory also encouraged members to avoid travel to the areas altogether.
The advisory came after several thousand people in Southeast Asia and Canada have been infected with the condition – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – since March.
The advisory prohibits business- or academic-related travel to countries for which the Center for Disease Control has issued travel advisories. BU’s advisory names mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, though the CDC updates their advisories frequently.
The letter asked students, faculty and staff who must travel to the regions to “delay their return to the Boston University campus until 10 days have elapsed from their return to an unaffected area.”
The advisory, however, does not mention how the university will check to determine if students from affected regions have spent the full 10 days before returning to BU. BU officials would not comment on the advisory last week.
The CDC website said schools who host international students from SARS affected regions should refrain from “canceling or postponing classes, meetings or other gatherings that will include persons traveling to the United States from areas with SARS,” and refrain from the “quarantine of persons arriving from areas with SARS.”
BU students, including College of Arts and Sciences freshman Greta Tinay, said they think the advisory is justified and necessary to stop the outbreak.
“[The travel ban] is for the better good of society,” Tinay said. “This is how AIDS started and people should take this seriously because it could become an epidemic like AIDS.”
SARS, a disease believed to have originated from mainland China, has spread to over 5,000 cases worldwide and over 300 in the United States, according to the CDC and World Health Organization.
There are 20 suspected cases of SARS in Massachusetts.
The disease is believed to be a coronavirus, which usually causes mild to moderate respiratory illness in humans. However, SARS is a variation of the coronavirus and little is known about why it causes more fatal illnesses, according to the CDC.
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