Photo: CGTN

On Saturday, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa reported that more than 1,000 students have tested positive for COVID-19 since the campus reopened last week.

According to the university's COVID-19 dashboard, there has been a total of more than 1,300 confirmed cases of the virus across all campuses of the system since the beginning of 2020.   

Another prominent U.S. university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, saw its confirmed cases of COVID-19 cases top 1,000 since the start of the pandemic, with the vast majority of those cases being recorded since the start of the fall semester.

In response to the outbreak, the university announced it would switch to remote learning. Students were told to cancel their housing contracts and have until Sunday to leave campus residence halls.

College towns are bracing for more spikes in COVID-19 on campuses. Some are considering renewed shutdowns because of growing infection rates linked to parties and crowded bars.

At the University of Missouri, more than 300 students tested positive for the virus, prompting the local health director to order bars to stop serving alcohol at 9 p.m. and close by 10 p.m.

Other towns have also ordered bars to shut down to prevent further spread of the virus.

But officials are still concerned over college students sharing dorms, bathrooms and potentially becoming "super-spreaders" of the virus, even beyond campus borders.

The U.S. has more than 5.9 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, including more than 180,000 deaths, according to the latest tracking by Johns Hopkins University.