Cornell University shuts down Ithaca campus after surge of nearly 500 Covid-19 cases detected

(CNN)Cornell University is shutting down its Ithaca, New York, campus and moving to "alert level red" after what the school described as a "rapid spread" of Covid-19 among students.

There were 469 active student cases as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Cornell's online Covid dashboard, and an overall positivity rate of 3.01% for the week of December 6, among the students tested.

President Martha Pollack said that the university's Covid-19 lab team detected evidence of the Omicron variant "in a significant number of Monday's positive student samples."