As COVID-19 cases surge just as students are about to head home from winter vacation, dozens of US colleges are moving classes online again for at least the first week or so of the semester — and some warn it could stretch out longer if the wave of infection doesn’t subside soon.

Harvard is moving classes online for the first three weeks of the new year, with a return to campus expected in late January, “conditions permitting.” The University of Chicago is delaying the start of its new term and holding the first two weeks online. Some others are inviting students back to campus but starting classes online, including Michigan State University.

Many colleges are hoping an extra week or two will get them past the peak of the national spike caused by the highly contagious omicron variant. Still, the surge casts uncertainty over a semester many had hoped would be the closest to normal since the pandemic began.

For some students, starting the term remotely is becoming routine — many colleges used the strategy last year amid a surge of cases. But some fear that the latest change will last well beyond a week or two.

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Jake Maynard, a student at George Washington University in the nation’s capital, said he’s fine with a week of online classes, but beyond that he hopes officials trust the booster shots and provide a traditional college experience.

He’s already taken a year of online learning, which he says “didn’t work out” and wasn’t what he expected from a school that charges more than $50,000 a year.

“I’m a junior, but about half of my school experience has been online,” said Maynard, 20, of Ellicott City, Maryland. “You lose so much of what makes school school.”

The university is inviting students to return to campus starting Monday, but classes will be held online until Jan. 18 as officials step up virus testing and isolate all infected students. The school has more than doubled its isolation space and brought forward the deadline for a new call-back requirement by three weeks because of omicron.

“The omicron variant hit us at a terrible time, basically the last two weeks of the fall semester, which doesn’t give us much time to prepare for spring,” said Dr. Lynn Goldman, Dean of the George Washington School of Public Health.

The university was among those that saw infections soar in the days leading up to winter vacation. The campus averaged more than 80 cases a day during finals week, compared to just a few a day for much of the fall. And while the most recent cases were mild, nearly all of them were in college students who had received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

As for the mid-January target date for resuming in-person learning, Goldman said officials “recognize that it may not be possible.”

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So far, more than 70 colleges in 26 states are starting the term online, and more say they are considering it. Many of them now use term systems that start earlier than those with semesters.

Many of those moving online are in recent virus hotspots, including George Washington, Yale and Columbia on the East Coast, as well as Wayne State University in Detroit and Northwestern University near Chicago. The list also includes most campuses of the University of California and Rice University in Houston.

At the University of California, Riverside, students can return Monday but face two weeks of online classes. They are also being asked to self-isolate for five days while they undergo two rounds of virus testing.

It’s the first time since last spring that the school has been completely remote, but Chancellor Kim Wilcox said it was the best way to stop the virus from spreading after pupils returned from vacation.

“We think of it as rebuilding our bubble,” he said. “It gives us a chance to reset things and hopefully get up and running.”

Some other colleges are delaying the new term without offering distance learning courses. Syracuse University pushed back its semester by a week, citing projections that the first three weeks of January will be “the toughest of this push.”

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Others are continuing with in-person learning, saying the health risks are low with masks and booster shots.

At Northeastern University in Boston, one of many schools requiring reminders, students are returning as scheduled. Officials said the school was shifting its focus from preventing all cases to preventing serious illness or hospitalizations.

“As we enter this endemic phase of the pandemic, our job is to continue to effectively control COVID, not let COVID control us,” said Ken Henderson, Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning, in a message to campus.

The move drew praise from Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who said COVID-19 poses little risk to students, while “prolonged isolation is a very real risk to their growth and mental health.”

The University of Florida plans to return to in-person learning at the start of the semester, despite a request from a faculty union to teach remotely for the first three weeks.

Paul Ortiz, president of the campus chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, said older faculty members will be at greater risk, especially without a mask or vaccine mandate, which have been banned by the GOP governor. Ron DeSantis.

“We don’t want our campus to become a superspreader,” Ortiz said. “There’s just a lot of uncertainty right now, a lot of stress.”

At some colleges starting remotely, officials say they are committing to a quick return to class.

The 50,000-student University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus plans to resume in-person classes after a week of online instruction. Students are encouraged to return during this first week so they can take two tests for the virus, which will allow them to resume in-person activities if they test negative.

“Each semester we’ve had a spike when students come back,” said university spokesperson Robin Kaler. “We want to make sure we’re on top of that so we can crush it as quickly as possible.”