The University of Michigan football program has cancelled an international trip it had planned to take this spring over fears of the expanding coronavirus outbreak.
According to The Detroit News, it wasn't clear where the Wolverines were headed, but the team had narrowed it's destination options down to two choices. "The football team will not be taking an international trip this spring due to the health concerns around the world, most notably coronavirus," UM football spokesman Dave Ablauf told the paper Monday.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh had taken the team abroad in each of the past three years — to Rome for the program’s first trip in 2017, to Paris in 2018 and to South Africa in 2019. The trips, which have ranged from $800,000 to $1.19 million, have been funded by Michigan donors.
As reported by The Detroit News, coronavirus is a respiratory disease first detected in China last December, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it has been found in 32 locations internationally, including the United States. There have been outbreaks in South Korea, Iran and Italy, where 50,000 people in 10 northern Italian towns have reportedly been locked down to contain the outbreak in Europe.
The health risk posed by coronavirus is high, according to the CDC. More than 2,500 have died from the virus.
