Students at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) have not attended classes due to the pandemic since mid-March 2020 and in the case of freshmen, they have never attended school.

However, this is about to change; Baja California has been in Yellow on the Epidemiological Traffic Light chart for some months now (with the exception of Mexicali, which returned to Orange) and there are fewer and fewer cases in the state, therefore UABC has developed a pilot program for students at the Ensenada and Tijuana campuses to take inter semester courses in person.

On June 1st, the Secretariat of Health of the Baja California State Government approved the protocols of the pilot program that the university will implement to teach the inter semester courses during the month of June. In this way, they are preparing for the return to school for the next term, which begins in August.

This involves adjusting to a series of hygiene and safety strategies and procedures in order to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection.

The pilot program will be carried out from June 2 to June 25, 2021 at the Ensenada and Tijuana campuses; it will not be carried out in Mexicali since the number of infections has been on the rise in recent days.

Enrollment to the inter semester face-to-face courses will be voluntary for students and it is mandatory that the teacher has already been vaccinated.

The courses may be programmed under the hybrid modality, alternating the face-to-face activity with the distance modality.

The university clarifies that in the case of the face-to-face activity, certain guidelines must be followed:

• At least one sanitary filter will be installed for every 100 students attending.
• The use of masks will be mandatory and permanent during the entire class time.
• Classes should not be larger than 20 people
• A minimum distance of 1.8 m between students must be maintained at all times.
• Every two hours there shall be 10-minute breaks, the classroom shall be vacated to ventilate the spaces and disinfected
li]Disinfectant gel dispensers, soap and disposable towels will be placed[/li]

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