The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) said yes­ter­day that 28 stu­dents and one ad­min­is­tra­tor are cur­rent­ly in Suzhou, Chi­na.

A state­ment is­sued by the uni­ver­si­ty said that since the news of the coro­n­avirus out­break, UWI has been close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Chi­na.

UWI said it has an ad­min­is­tra­tive pres­ence and 36 stu­dents en­rolled in a BSc Soft­ware En­gi­neer­ing pro­gramme at UWI-Chi­na In­sti­tute of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (UWICI­IT) which al­lows for two years of study at the Glob­al In­sti­tute of Soft­ware Tech­nol­o­gy (GIST).

UWI said it is work­ing close­ly with GIST and oth­er rel­e­vant lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in Chi­na to en­sure the safe­ty and well­be­ing of stu­dents and staff.

The city of Suzhou is not with­in the epi­cen­tre of the virus. Nev­er­the­less, the GIST cam­pus re­mains closed un­til Feb­ru­ary 23 when the new se­mes­ter is ex­pect­ed to be­gin. There is con­tin­u­ous on-site sup­port on the cam­pus. Med­ical and screen­ing pro­to­cols have al­so been es­tab­lished.