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Amid rising global cases of the novel coronavirus and at least two deaths in the U.S., officials with the Kearsarge Regional School District in New London, N.H., are asking students and staff who recently returned from a school trip to Europe to stay home.
Some 35 students and staff members with Kearsarge Regional High School took a trip to Italy, France and the United Kingdom. In Italy, the group traveled briefly to the Lombardy and Veneto regions, the same areas of the country that has experienced an outbreak of the virus in recent weeks.
While “there is no indication that the students were exposed" to the virus, as per local station WCAX, District Superintendent Winifred Feneberg said the school is asking all those who were on the trip to stay home until at least March 9 “out of an abundance of caution.”
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"Thankfully, we have a number of modern technological resources at our disposal. We are utilizing Google Classrooms, Skype, Facetime and a bevy of other tools to ensure that the students who are returning from abroad are able to continue their studies with as minimal an impact as possible," said Feneberg, according to WCAX.
The State Department on Sunday updated its travel advisory to its highest level – Level 4, “Do Not Travel” – for the Lombardy and Veneto regions in northern Italy.
The travel advisory cited quarantines set up in 10 Lombardy towns and one in Veneto, with a combined population of 50,000 people, as well as "the level of community transmission of the virus." Sunday's message comes after an earlier warning to avoid non-essential travel to all of Italy, where more than 1,694 cases were confirmed through Sunday — a 50 percent jump from just 24 hours earlier.
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There are now more than 89,000 individual coronavirus cases globally, according to Monday estimates, with some 80 cases in the U.S. alone. More than 3,000 people have died worldwide.
Fox News' Travis Fedschun and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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