Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,
Today, I write this from home, where it’s pretty dreary outside and it’s been a week since we moved Salus online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First and foremost, I want to convey our sincerest wishes of good health and safety for you and your families during this unsettled time. While we find ourselves as a university community experiencing something we’ve never dealt with before, we know that our alumni, students, and families will meet this challenge responsibly, bravely and with determination. We are Salus Strong!
As you all know, we’ve pivoted to online training in all of our programs and our Salus-based clinics are closed due to the emergency. Depending upon your particular program and external clinical site, several of you are still working at those sites, while others have been instructed not to. We are working closely with accrediting bodies, as well as your external education coordinators to develop a mitigation plan that enables you to compete your clinical requirements as soon as practical and, hopefully, to avoid any graduation delays.
As you also know, we’ve made the very difficult decision to have the May graduation ceremony done virtually. I know how disappointed you are, as I am, but it was the only responsible thing we could do. Dr. Caldwell and his staff are looking at other models and working hard to make this as meaningful and special as possible. As I noted in my email that went out earlier this week, students will have the option of walking during our commencement ceremony in October.
As you all realize by now, this is a very fluid situation, with new information and new guidelines becoming available almost daily. Just yesterday, the CDC provided additional guidance for healthcare providers to include:
o Delaying all elective ambulatory provider visits
o Rescheduling of elective and non-emergent admissions to hospitals
o Delaying inpatient and outpatient elective surgical and procedural cases
o Postponing routine dental and eyecare visits
According to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the virus can live up to 72 hours on flat surfaces. It lives longest on plastic and steel and does poorly on copper. The virus can live up to 24 hours on cardboard, which suggests packages that arrive in the mail could have low levels of the virus. When the virus becomes suspended in droplets smaller than 5 micrometers — known as aerosols — it can stay suspended for about 3 hours with a half-life of about ½ hour, researchers said, before drifting down and settling on surfaces where it can linger for hours or days. All this information tells us how important it is to comply with the current CDC guidelines for social distancing, wiping down surfaces and regularly washing our hands. I suggest that you get into the habit of wiping down packages, your mail and things from the grocery store with a mild bleach solution, to be safe.
I recently received a link to a very informative video done by a friend and colleague, Dr. Harvey Rubin. Dr. Rubin is an infectious disease specialist at Penn who has also been a previous commencement speaker at Salus. I really liked his comparison to today’s emergency with that of the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how this is so very different in many respects. The only new information that has come out since he recorded this is the possibility that water droplets that can carry the virus can remain airborne for longer than originally thought. With his permission, I have shared a link to his talk here.
If you already haven’t come to the realization that this emergency will go on for a period of months, rather than weeks, you need to change the way you’re thinking about it. Experts tell us we haven’t yet seen the peak in the United States. What’s happened in China and is currently playing out in Italy, Spain and other parts of Europe provides us a template for what can happen here. So, please take this seriously, practice the precautions that have been prescribed and be the conduit for accurate information for your friends and family.
Even though you’re practicing social distancing and doing all the other preventive measures, doesn’t mean you have to sit in your living room and watch TV all day. I strongly encourage you to get outside and get some exercise, whether it be walking, running, working out in small (less than 10) groups where you can have at least 10 feet between you, or riding your bike on a path or around the neighborhood. This is probably one of the best things you can do to help relieve stress and anxiety caused by all of this. For those of you who would like to speak with one of our counselors, you can schedule an appointment to virtually meet with them here.
I know this is unnerving and very frightening to many of you. While, at least right now, the end of this may not be in sight, I assure you, we’ll get through this. Keep the emails coming and remember that the most up-to-date information about all of this can be found on our website here!
I’d like to leave you with one final thought that I gleaned from an article I recently read in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The author spoke with his rabbi who suggested that while we must practice “physical distancing,” between others, it also important to maintain “social solidarity,” by making extra efforts to support people around us. That means checking up on your classmates, family members or if you have someone in your neighborhood who is in the “high-risk group” who cannot get out to get groceries, etc. It’s important to remember, as we make a conscious effort to continue to stay healthy and safe, we are all in this together. You all are in my thoughts and prayers as we work through this as a Salus community. Let’s all Stay Salus Strong!
Mike
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