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Cambridge (dpa) - Students at the US University of Harvard have to be vaccinated against corona at the beginning of the new semester in autumn.

"In order to achieve the high vaccination rates required to protect our community, Harvard will prescribe the corona vaccination for all students who will be on campus this fall," said the college in Cambridge, Massachusetts Wednesday (local time) with. Exceptions would therefore only be granted for medical or religious reasons. A number of other US universities such as Yale, Columbia and Princeton had already introduced such compulsory vaccinations.

Before returning to campus, students must have completed their vaccination with a vaccine approved by the FDA or the World Health Organization.

This means that at least two weeks must have elapsed since the last dose of the vaccine was administered, it said.

The university wants to offer international students and others who do not have access to it before autumn a vaccination when they arrive.

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The university, founded in 1636 by British immigrants, is considered one of the elite forges in the USA, which has produced several presidents and dozens of Nobel Prize winners.

More than 23,000 students are currently enrolled at the private university, which is known for its strict admission requirements.

Progress in the nationwide vaccination campaign had slowed recently.

In the country with around 330 million inhabitants, more than 148.5 million people have received at least one vaccination dose, 107.3 million are fully vaccinated, as figures from the CDC show.

In total, more than 32.5 million people in the USA have been infected with the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen, and more than 579,000 people have died.

Around 44,500 new infections were reported within 24 hours, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) on Thursday morning (CEST).

That is about 10,600 fewer cases than a week ago.

The number of corona deaths in this period fell by around 180 to 777 compared to the previous week.

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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210506-99-488306 / 2

Communication from Harvard

Vaccination Statistics (CDC)