MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been approximately $78 million.
Members of the WVU Board of Governors received the financial report during their regular meeting Wednesday.Paula Congelio, WVU Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, told the BOG early in the pandemic, dollars were needed immediately for cleaning, disinfecting, PPE- to include plexiglass shields, additional equipment for working from home, leasing buses because the PRT was not running and COVID testing.
“Testing by far is our largest expense. We did return to campus testing for all students, faculty and staff for the fall and spring,” Congelio said. “We have surveillance testing ongoing after the start of classes for both semesters and that will last until year end.”
The university also had to pay extra housing expenses for international students that could not travel and costs associated with contact tracing, quarantine and isolation.
“In total, $23 million in expenses by the end of the year,” Congelio said.
The largest hit in the revenue column was $29.5 million due to the suspension of athletic events. A drop in tuition resulted in a revenue loss of $9 million and a reduction in university fees resulted in a loss of $5.8 million.
“Students with classes that were totally online we discounted their university fees by about two-thirds because not being on campus they were not going to be able to avail themselves to some of the support services that those fees do support,” Congelio said.
Despite cutting $35 million from the budget in salary reductions, furloughs and aggressive cost cutting measures the losses continue to to add up.
“In total, we had a loss of revenue of about $55.3 million,” Congelio said. “So, when you add that to the expenses we had a $78 million impact from the pandemic.”
The university received $20 million in CARES Act funding from the federal government early in the pandemic. Officials immediately allocated $10 million of the sum for students relief and the balance was used to offset dining hall losses when students went home early. Another $20 million is expected and $10 million of that has already been earmarked for student relief and the balance will be used to offset COVID related costs.
“We do plan to issue debt to help with deferred maintenance projects to further preserve our cash position,” Congelio said.