The University of Colorado’s Boulder campus will halt in-person learning beginning Monday and will stay online for the remainder of the semester.

The change was announced by associate vice chancellor Dan Jones during a weekly news conference Tuesday. He said the decision was partially influenced by Thanksgiving and the desire by the school to give students maximum flexibility in traveling. 

Katherine Eggert, a vice provost and vice chancellor, said school would move online in six days so that students and faculty could adjust. Students won’t be required to move off campus, and testing will still be available on campus.

Eggert said the university had improved significantly its online offerings since the spring. 

He and other university officials said that the decision was “difficult.” But cases are climbing in the area; he said the prevalence rate was roughly 1 case per every 100 people. He said hospitalizations there are the worst they’ve ever been, worse even than the situation in the spring, when the disease was new and running rampant.

Coronavirus cases have been spiking across Colorado but particularly in the Denver metro area. Within weeks of school starting, CU Boulder identified hundreds of cases, and students have been cited for attending and throwing parties. Boulder County, like others in the area, had been met with tighter restrictions from the state in recent days because of spiking cases.

Jeff Zayach, the executive director of the Boulder County health department, said during the press conference that the county was technically within the parameters for a shelter-in-place order. He said county officials were sending the state a mitigation plan in the coming days to describe how they plan to curb the spread of the virus there.

He said the situation was “pretty serious and significant.” As others have in recent weeks, he warned people against COVID fatigue and said that it would take “personal responsibility” of Boulder County residents to slow the spread and prevent lockdown orders.