{"id":75740,"date":"2020-10-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/white-house-covid-19-response-coordinator-dr-deborah-birx-commends-uris-response-to-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2020-10-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T00:00:00","slug":"white-house-covid-19-response-coordinator-dr-deborah-birx-commends-uris-response-to-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2020\/10\/white-house-covid-19-response-coordinator-dr-deborah-birx-commends-uris-response-to-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx commends 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s response to pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2020 \u2013 Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, praised 溏心vlog免费B站 leaders for their months of preparation that led to a flexible response to the COVID-19 pandemic during her visit Thursday afternoon to the Kingston Campus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe message I wanted to carry across to the 23 universities and the 32 or so states that we\u2019ve visited is that universities that spent their spring and summer really planning and were willing to have a flexible plan that was comprehensive and collaborative \u2026 has been very critical,\u201d said Birx, speaking at a late afternoon press conference on the common outside the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering. \u201cIt was very interesting to hear about the thousands of hours and millions of dollars that have been spent to really ensure that the students, faculty, staff and the community remain safe through this experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"oembed oembed-youtu-be\" style=\"\" data-url=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/UEZtoZoSWks\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dr Birx Visits 溏心vlog免费B站\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UEZtoZoSWks?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Over the past several months, Ambassador Birx, a world-renowned global health official and leader in the field of HIV\/AIDS, has toured college and university campuses to evaluate what is \u201chappening on the ground\u201d and talk with state, local and higher education leaders.<\/p>\n<p>During her three-hour visit to the Kingston Campus, Birx met with Gov. Gina Raimondo and Rhode Island Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, President David M. Dooley, 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s senior leadership team and COVID-19 Task Force leaders. She also toured the University\u2019s COVID-19 testing site at the Memorial Union, as the University ramps up mandatory testing of the entire student body to establish a baseline data set to measure community health for the remainder of the semester.<\/p>\n<p>In her talks with officials, Birx said she stressed the need to expand surveillance testing and wastewater testing. She praised the University for establishing 600 units for isolation and quarantine and for expansion of mandatory testing of more than 16,000 students during\u00a0 the next two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re very excited to be here, when yesterday and now today, we\u2019ll reach more than 3,000 or 4,000 students tested,\u201d she said of the effort, which will test about 1,600 students a day. \u201cI think we\u2019re on a great momentum to get through all of the students \u2026 and then sustain that over time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She also commended the multitude of signs around the campus urging the community to follow COVID-19 precautions. \u201cOne of our favorite signs talked about a student\u2019s phone, mask, ID, and wallet,\u201d she said. \u201c[It] reminds them that a mask is part of what we do every day now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a late afternoon session, Birx met with several professors and students who are conducting research on COVID-19 related projects, including Associate Professor <a href=\"mailto:https:\/\/today.uri.edu\/news\/smart-mask-designed-by-multidisciplinary-team-of-uri-students\/\">Kunal Mankodiya<\/a> and students working on a \u201csmart mask\u201d that can detect coronavirus symptoms, and Professor Angela Slitt, who is exploring a saliva test for the virus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a very promising test,\u201d said Birx. \u201cWhat\u2019s exciting is it works outside of the PCR platform using different reagents that will make the test more applicable, not only here, but potentially across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she tours the Northeast, including a visit to Connecticut earlier Thursday, Birx said she wanted to alert officials to a shift in \u201cviral dynamics\u201d as the region sees an uptick in virus cases. More cases are occurring in small, private gatherings where asymptomatic individuals, not knowing they are infected, spread the virus to friends and family, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs workplaces, public areas, retail groups have really created safe spaces, where we\u2019re seeing the spread occur now is in private spaces where we feel comfortable, where we take off our masks, and invite in our neighbors and friends,\u201d she said. \u201cWe really want to understand where that\u2019s happening, stopping it before it becomes broad based and really proactively giving messages to communities about how to safely gather, how to be socially engaged, but physically distanced and really protecting those with vulnerabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Dooley appreciated the chance to have the University\u2019s leadership team, COVID-19 Task Force, faculty and students share how the University is responding to the pandemic and to hear from Birx how comparable institutions are handling the crisis. Also, he said, the national data that Birx shared was encouraging.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s an awful lot of students who are doing exactly the right thing at many different kinds of universities. And that in some places, the initial upticks have leveled off. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re hoping to achieve here at 溏心vlog免费B站 through this mechanism of comprehensive, mandatory testing of students and ongoing surveillance testing,\u201d Dooley said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, the nature of what they\u2019re seeing in regard to asymptomatic spread that we thought we\u2019re seeing here,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was encouraging for us to know that is in fact a larger trend. It\u2019s pretty consistent with what other institutions are seeing. We can look at the steps that they&#8217;ve taken, modify them to fit the 溏心vlog免费B站 context, maybe invent some new ideas of our own, and be able to control it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 9, 2020 \u2013 Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, praised 溏心vlog免费B站 leaders for their months of preparation that led to a flexible response to the COVID-19 pandemic during her visit Thursday afternoon to the Kingston Campus. \u201cThe message I wanted to carry across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}