Ohio State announced Friday the creation of a task force to direct the return of “appropriate on-campus operations” once the COVID-19 outbreak has been contained.

The post-pandemic operations task force will plan the return of campus operations and faculty, staff and students will be represented in the planning process, an Ohio State news release said. The task force is chaired by Gail Marsh, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for the university and Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State.

“All university units have begun transition planning while still responding to the crisis at hand,” University President Michael V. Drake said. “The task force will align planning across the wide spectrum of functions and operations necessary to the university’s return to on-campus operations.”

The time table for the back-to-campus transition is still unclear, the release said.

Drake announced March 12 that classes would be transitioned online through the end of spring semester and campus would close for all nonessential functions. Bruce McPheron, university executive vice president and provost, announced April 1 that online-only classes would extend through the summer term. Drake announced April 3 that university events through July 6 were canceled.

University operations will transition back on campus once deemed appropriate by a safe-campus and scientific advisory subgroup of the task force led by Amy Fairchild, dean of the College of Public Health, and Bernadette Melnyk, dean of the College of Nursing and the university’s chief wellness officer, according to the release.

The subgroup will also include members from the Wexner Medical Center’s Division of Infectious Diseases and other colleges, departments and offices at Ohio State, but the names of the additional members were not immediately made available.

“The fight against COVID-19 remains a real and immediate threat to all of us. Ohio State is actively engaged in this fight and in moving forward into a safer future,” Drake said. “We established this task force to engage in rigorous planning and to accelerate our return once it is safe to do so.”