Health Sciences In The Media

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins confirmed that the fall semester will begin as scheduled on Aug. 24 with a mix of in-person and remote instruction. More than half of all classes will include an in-person component.

Preliminary data shows hardly anyone has immunity against COVID-19, but the University of Arizona is hoping to expand both testing and research on the subject.

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins discusses the university's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in PBS NewsHour's "Rethinking College" series.

Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, is one of three authors of the color-coded COVID-19 Risk Index. Popescu simultaneously released it on Twitter, where it has been liked more than 2,300 times. "We wanted people to understand, as life opens up, that there is a range of possible risks, and there are things you can do to stay safe, and things you might want to avoid," Popescu said.

As schools try to figure out how to get kids back in the classroom safely, there’s a term you’re going to hear more of as a possible solution called cohorting. It means keeping students together to try and narrow children's exposure to COVID-19. And as many Valley parents are faced with deciding whether or not to send their kids back to school, pediatrician Dr. Gary Kirkilas from the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix is asked about child safety almost daily.

Several research groups, including teams in the United States, Canada and the Netherlands, are working on nasal coronavirus vaccines. The hope is that mucosal vaccines will do all that their intramuscular competitors can and more, mounting a multipronged attack on the coronavirus from the moment it tries to breach the body's barriers, said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona.

A heat wave swept through much of the United States this week, with some of the highest temperatures forecasted in Southwestern states battling some of the most troubling coronavirus outbreaks in the country. "In the context of this escalating pandemic, weather is pretty far down on the list of things that influence spread," said Katherine Ellingson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Arizona.

Amanda Wilson, an environmental health sciences doctoral candidate in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, is lead author on a recent study published in the Journal of Hospital Infection that assessed the ability of a variety of nontraditional mask materials to protect a person from infection after 30 seconds and after 20 minutes of exposure in a highly contaminated environment.

Doctors say they are seeing a sharp increase in young patients with COVID-19, and health experts are urging young people to take the virus seriously. Some state and federal officials have put the rise in U.S. cases down to increased testing. But Katherine Ellingson, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, said this is definitely not the case in Arizona, where she said "the rise in COVID testing has not kept pace with the rise in cases."

Dr. Frank LoVecchio, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, works in multiple emergency rooms in the Phoenix metropolitan area. He shares a first-hand account of what he is seeing on the frontlines every day.