Covid Rules at University of Oxford to Remain Unchanged After July 19th

Students at the University of Oxford have been instructed that the institution's rules on social distancing, face masks and working from home will not change after "Freedom Day" because "Covid remains a real threat".

2 min read

The number of settings in which life will continue as it is now after ‘Freedom Day’ keeps growing. Most recently, students at the University of Oxford have been told that rules on mask-wearing and social distancing will remain unchanged after July 19th due to high infection rates in the county.

The number of positive Covid tests in Oxford has been on the up in recent weeks, but deaths remain low, with zero deaths having been recorded in seven of the last 10 weeks and no more than three deaths recorded in the other three weeks.

Graph from Oxfordshire County Council.

University leaders haven’t let this stop them imposing tough lockdown restrictions. In an email sent to staff and students on Tuesday (and kindly forwarded to us at Lockdown Sceptics by a reader), Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, the Principal of Somerville College, said measures would remain “until further notice”.

Please note that, whilst the Government has confirmed plans to lift Covid restrictions on Monday, July 19th, the University’s policies on social distancing, face coverings and working from home will not change due to the high rates of Covid in Oxford. We will therefore continue with our Covid restrictions in College until further notice and, for the moment, we will not be allowing visitors.

On its website, the University warns that “Covid remains a real threat to many people in our community and… the pandemic is not yet over”. Students are instructed to continue following these measures:

  • Continue social distancing – assume two metres within University buildings unless told otherwise.
  • Keep washing your hands.
  • Keep wearing a face covering (unless you’re exempt).
  • Get tested – twice a week, with Lateral Flow Devices (LFDs); and take a PCR test if you have symptoms or have received a positive LFD test result or have been advised that you are a close contact of someone who has a PCR-confirmed case of Covid.
  • Continue to follow the self-isolation guidance.

If we can’t banish these restrictions from one of the country’s – the world’s – most learned institutions, what chance have we got of scrapping them from pubs and restaurants?

Comments

This week across the site:

Email me alerts for this discussion
Notify of

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

84 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
5 years ago

Piers Corbyn’s Greatest Ever Speech? (full)

https://odysee.com/@ResistanceGB:f/Piers-Corbyns-Greatest-Ever-Speech:7?r=5AyVUc94rX7smyCrkKt6a7ZMWbkALzHU

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

I am Spartacas
I am Spartacas
5 years ago

Oxford should renamed Wokeford.

RW
RW
5 years ago
Reply to  I am Spartacas

I think “where the oxen cross the river” sums it up nicely. 🙂

Stephanos
Stephanos
5 years ago

I was hoping to visit the Bodleian again next week after a long absence.
I used to visit it twice weekly; now, not at all.
And I won’t be going back until all these stupid rules have gone.
I suppose the same idiocy will be imposed at the Ashmolean.

Covidonian
Covidonian
5 years ago

I see the reset not in the context not of Gates and Schwab but in the machinations of everyday bureaucrats to opportunistically use this “shock” to change our expectations. in healthcare and education they use the opportunity of Covid to“realign” their service. For healthcare it’s the ‘Doctor won’t see you now until you’ve been zoomed by a nurse ”. Meanwhile GPs who get paid for every jab and death certificate can virtue signal about how under pressure they are. The like an 80s print union but certainly won’t be treated like they were.

For HE the lectures will be on zoom and if they can be bothered students will get a tutorial once a month delivered by a junior PHD candidate.. They can then do away with expensive real estate assets, and staff. Of course at elite universities they will welcome double jabbed elites into the quadrangles for “in person” lectures. . The provincial universities with less prestige will have to welcome their students back with a miserable and paranoid mask experience.

For most workplaces it’s about using people’s temporary need to lock them in their homes on zoom, to make the location accessible routinely only to the… Read more »

brachiopod
brachiopod
5 years ago

For a top ranking university in terms of research you might have hoped that someone in authority would have bothered to read a bit of the voluminous research from the last 50 years that explains why social distancing and mask wearing can have no significant effect on the reduction of transmission of aerosolised virus.

Zoomer@14
Zoomer@14
5 years ago

hmmm…how very typical of Oxford. Universities appear to be the grooming grounds for the continued tyranny. Send many children to university and they come back as a PC/WOKE unofficial Social marshals.
But look who finances/partners many of our universities…The Chinese

Andrew Fish
Andrew Fish
5 years ago

Pubs and restaurants have to worry about their income on a daily basis: people don’t have to eat out in the same restaurant every day, so hospitality venues don’t have guaranteed customers. This means that how they respond to July 19th will depend on their perception of their client base – if they think more people will come if they feel “safe” they will keep restrictions; if they think people crave normality they will lift them. Some will probably initially make the wrong call, but if they see themselves doing worse than their competitors they will change tack.

Universities are different, partially because they get some funding from central government, partially because their customers are effectively “locked in” – if you’re a year into a degree at Oxford, you can’t just switch to Nottingham and finish it there. Oxford also rides on its reputation to open doors – the BBC, Parliament and other institutions are much easier to access for those with an Oxford degree. For these reasons, Oxford can get away with subjecting its students to worse than businesses or, indeed, most other universities. Why they choose to is another question.

DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
5 years ago

Learned they might be, but totally lacking in common sense they are

Corky Ringspot
Corky Ringspot
5 years ago

I can’t go back to my old college (Oriel) any longer. Just a lot of preppy, sanitised bores nowadays, with glazed-over expressions. The bar has been fully illuminated, smoking banned of course, and the juke box has gone. I don’t know what other traditions and practices have been banned, and I don’t dare find out. Oh and of course no one gave a second thought to the Rhodes statue on the wall – and I didn’t know any racists among my peers back then and don’t now. I took myself off the mailing list some time ago. Very sad.

Hugh
Hugh
5 years ago

I suggest this says it all about the state of education in this country…

RickH
RickH
5 years ago

One of the features of the shit-show has been the total failure of academe to stand up for rationality against witchcraft, thus undermining its fundamental purpose.

Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
5 years ago

Guys, refuse, rebel, demonstrate, mass collective disobedience. They can’t send you all down. To the barricades.

nayim
nayim
5 years ago

Say no to vaccine passports and mandatory vaccines.
Parliament Square, Monday 19th July @ 12pm

protest.jpg
Adamb
Adamb
5 years ago

Going to Oxford from a rural Northumberland comprehensive in the mid 90’s was probably the most exciting point of my life. So depressing to read this.

Alexander Tertius Harvey
Alexander Tertius Harvey
5 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

Working for the institution in the early 1990s was one of the more depressing experiences of mine.

Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
5 years ago

I’ve just written this to my mailing list of 200 MPs: (I just put it in the title because they will never read it otherwise) 

“Rich Conservative MPs vote to force poor care workers to take the experimental vaccine and are now in breach of the Nuremberg Code. Reiner Fuellmich will see you in court.

Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday from 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell

NeilofWatford
NeilofWatford
5 years ago

Yet another reason not to waste £60k on a snowflake degree.

7fonn7
7fonn7
5 years ago

Some real galaxy brains there

RickH
RickH
5 years ago
Reply to  7fonn7

… but certainly not here in this thread! A parade of gormless resentful prejudices. Could be 77th Brigade on a coach outing!

Norman
Norman
5 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Well stop boosting the total.

Norman
Norman
5 years ago

The students have already paid up. Paying customers in the real world have the option of not paying and going elsewhere.

TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
5 years ago

There’s a lot of talk about the patents at the moment. This came out quite early in the scamdemic and seemed to have a lot of interesting information but I don’t know anything about the presenters.

Q is for the Queen’s QinetiQ – Coronavirus Patent – Huge Discovery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_bdHn5GM

Hopeless
Hopeless
5 years ago

Better change OU’s colour from Dark Blue to Yellow, as in “Yellow Peril” and “Tory Back Colouration”.

TheFascistCoronaFraud
TheFascistCoronaFraud
5 years ago

If you were an investigator looking for the criminals who are pulling the strings, you would find them via Oxford University. No organisation has been more instrumental in promoting this evil than the supposedly intelligent people at Oxford University. It’s an establishment breeding, brainwashing, recruiting and manipulation centre. It is a stain on the country.

Fraz-ahr
Fraz-ahr
5 years ago

A veritable bastion of leftism. Not surprising Tony [The High Priest] Blair, wants these places of Worship built everywhere: the long fucking march through the institutions; a fabulous ploy! Big contributions and donations from the Chinese Government, as well…..I think the Tutors and Students, both, will Pray for harder and more frequent lockdowns. And zero Covid, on top, for good measure. Before resting their weary and exhausted little heads, on seriously bitter, salty, tear-stained pillows. God bless their little cotton socks !!

WilliamC
WilliamC
5 years ago

The university system has helped drive the Covid programme. Most of them are compromised institutions. At a senior level academic and administrative level, universities are plugged in to the deep entities that are running the show. Most of the people who work in universities are actually thick and deluded no matter how many qualifications they have. Lockdowns have made f**k all difference to their lives. The whole sorry system needs to be dismantled.

Mark
Mark
5 years ago

neigh, the world’s

Is there a horse in the house?

[That should be “nay”, I think, unless I’ve missed some subtle pun.]

thefoostybadger
thefoostybadger
5 years ago
Reply to  Mark

Quite a withering put down there Mark 😉

Mark
Mark
5 years ago

Please, you’re reining undeserved praise on me…

D J
D J
5 years ago
Reply to  Mark

Oh,fetlock!

Mark
Mark
5 years ago
Reply to  D J

Sh-hocking!

Susan
Susan
5 years ago
Reply to  Mark

I’ll be dam-ed!

Draper233
Draper233
5 years ago

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon:

Labour Life peer
Former Vice President of the Party of European Socialists
Visiting Professor at Imperial College
A Trustee at Full Fact

Say no more.

JayBee
JayBee
5 years ago
Reply to  Draper233

Baroness Bullshit seems more apt.

NonCompliant
NonCompliant
5 years ago

Anyone who pays for another year of “tuition” is a mug.

Hypatia
Hypatia
5 years ago

Not the only place. Halsway Manor in rural Somerset, which is the national centre for Folk Arts, has announced it is keeping da rulz the same after July 19th. Reduced numbers on courses, lots of sanitiser, keep 6ft apart, wear masks when moving around, and take a test before going there on any courses. I presume they are allowed to remove their muzzles when playing wind instruments or singing, but who knows?

davews
davews
5 years ago

My great niece is at Oxford, having had just one term actually there. She has already broken for the summer break. Surely they are not intending to still have the restrictions in October when they all return..

Sandra Barwick
Sandra Barwick
5 years ago
Reply to  davews

Yeah, they will. Imperial will be warning of half a million deaths over Christmas unless we do Exactly As They Command.

MikeAustin
MikeAustin
5 years ago

What is it about academic institutions that fosters such unintelligent behaviour among the intelligent? Funding, perhaps?

Susan
Susan
5 years ago
Reply to  MikeAustin

The ivory tower. Little real world experience.

Thank you for reading. Please help us keep the Daily Sceptic going by becoming a donor.