An estimated one in 10 people who contracted COVID-19 needed some form of additional help from NGOs operating behind the scenes.
Their problems ranged from access to food and medicine, handling children with special needs and challenging behaviour, even assistance with pets and farm animals, to loneliness and the “simple need for more attention”, said Tanya Melillo, who leads the Public Health Response Team.
Her team is responsible for gathering contacts of positive cases and looking for the source, but they found themselves facing other problems caused by the pandemic and stepped in help.
Melillo’s case management morphed into a more humanitarian role as the team reached out to patients with the collaboration of NGOs.
VCU to offer in-person classes starting March 4 VCU Monroe Park campus. (Source: VCU Capital News Service) By NBC12 Newsroom | February 18, 2021 at 3:10 PM EST - Updated February 18 at 3:10 PM
RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Virginia Commonwealth University will offer in-person and hybrid classes starting on March 4.
VCU President Michael Rao said the decision was made after careful consideration by VCU’s Public Health Response Team and the VCU Incident Command Team.
“Since the pandemic began last year, one question has guided our decisions: what is best for students, faculty and staff? Throughout, our goal has been to prioritize our community’s health and ensure academic, research and health care work is impacted as minimally as possible,” Rao said in a message to students, faculty and staff.
USCB students return to campus, receive COVID-19 tests
Bluffton Today
A long line of University of South Carolina Beaufort students snaked down the sidewalk outside USCB’s recreation center in Bluffton last Sunday as students waited to be tested for COVID-19 before moving back into residence halls from a long winter break.
On Friday, the university’s online dashboard reported 664 students and faculty tested since Jan. 6, 15 new cases of COVID-19 and 50 more test results pending.
The dashboard said Friday the university had a COVID-19 alert score of .83, a figure the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control classifies as a low risk level albeit on the high end of the classification. Moderate risk is 1 to 1.9.
In a wrap-up of the year that was,
Fiona Galea Debono looks at 2020 through the eyes of some key players behind the pandemic. Like a ‘tsunami’ with a ‘colossal’ impact on health, the economy, tourism, education and each of us, this is how the novel coronavirus hit Malta and the outlook for the future.
It all started with the first cases on March 7 and the world as we knew it crashed.
The pandemic had invaded Malta and a partial lockdown kicked in at the end of that month. A brief summer lull was fast followed by the spike of the ‘secondwave’ as mixed messages led the public to let down their guard and mass gatherings opened the way for the virus to spread.
December 10, 2020
When plans for the Fall 2020 Semester were being developed, UMass Amherst created a new Public Health Promotion Center (PHPC) and committed to launching a comprehensive asymptomatic testing program to mitigate COVID-19 within the campus community. What in August was a new endeavor undertaken in unprecedented times is now a highly respected model that has played a key role in protecting public health, having conducted 160,832 COVID-19 tests by semester’s close of classes on Nov. 20.
Today, the PHPC stands as the sixth-largest testing center in Massachusetts, and Gov. Charlie Baker has turned to UMass to also launch a major community testing program at the Mullins Center starting Dec. 14. Many challenges remain in the months ahead, but the university has established a proven infrastructure to monitor COVID-19 and help mitigate its spread.