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During COVID-19 schools have had to shift to an online environment. This has led to many students being far more demotivated as they can just turn their cameras off and take a nap, or even just not show up to online classes. This version of schooling has been hurting students mental health and sometimes the students don't even learn that much from online schooling. Students are stuck staring at screens for 6-7 hours a day to learn. This can lead to students depressed as they can only see their friends through a screen and if they don't understand the topic when being taught they have to go after school in order to understand the topic. While online learning is damaging to students, it is unfortunately the only option.

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Telecommunication and Virtual Doctor visits

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Telecommunication and Virtual Doctor visits

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I found this article that talks about how during this corona virus pandemic, many doctors have relied on virtual meetings with patients. Zoom, Skype, Google meets and several other telecommunication platforms have been utilized for consultations in order to keep patients from spreading the virus while keeping doctors safe from the face to face contact when it is not truly necessary

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Sometimes, innovation is driven by necessity. The worst global health crisis in 100 years forced the healthcare community to change where and how it cares for patients, and telehealth has risen to play a number of critical roles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Healthcare organizations are now using high-quality video to:

Provide care to patients directly in their homes

Enable providers to continue seeing patients and keep their practices open

Assemble global teams of medical experts for consultation and collaboration

Allow frontline healthcare workers to examine patients remotely to conserve PPE and reduce their risk of exposure

With providers now seeing 50 to 175 times more patients via telehealth since the pandemic started, many in the healthcare industry believe that telehealth has evolved more in six months than in the last decade. Let's take a look at how the pandemic has changed how we think about healthcare, and what we can expect post-COVID.

Before COVID: Barriers to adoption

Telehealth has been around for decades, but direct-to-consumer adoption didn't take off until recently. When most people got sick, they went to the doctor's office instead of logging on for a video visit - that's just how it was.

Part of the reason was limited coverage for virtual visits. In a 2019 survey, 77% of physicians flagged reimbursement uncertainty as one of the biggest barriers to widespread telehealth adoption.

Medicare, for example, had strict rules when it came to reimbursement for telehealth. Patients had to live in a designated rural area and travel to a special facility for their telehealth appointment. While it helped patients access specialists they might not normally be able to see, they still had to travel - sometimes many miles - to receive care.

Some providers were reluctant to adopt telehealth, fearing it was unreliable or would affect their bottom line. And while most patients who tried telehealth liked it, the technology simply wasn't widespread enough to attract more than 11% of consumers in 2019.

During COVID: Telehealth transformation

That all changed when the pandemic hit. Medical facilities and private practices closed, and no one knew when they'd be able to reopen. In response, the CARES Act expanded telehealth coverage for Medicare, which became a turning point for virtual care. Providers could finally collect Medicare reimbursement for telehealth visits provided in the home.

Health systems quickly spun up new telehealth solutions or expanded existing programs to ensure continuity of care for their patients. Amazingly, nearly 1.3 million Medicare beneficiaries received care virtually in the week ending April 18, 2020, compared to just 11,000 visits in the week ending March 7 - days before pandemic restrictions were put in place.

Bringing healthcare into the home

Using technology to reach people directly in their homes during the pandemic didn't just reduce coronavirus spread, it revolutionized the way providers treat patients. Telehealth has become essential to:

Providing primary and urgent care for common ailments like colds and earaches without exposing patients to the coronavirus

Conducting mental health appointments

Triaging patients with COVID-19 symptoms from home

Remotely monitoring patients with chronic conditions like heart disease or diabetes

Supporting healthy lifestyle changes, such as weight management or medication adherence

Virtual visits have played a role in reducing no-shows and appointment cancellations, which cost the industry billions of dollars a year, and nearly 75% of telehealth patients reported high satisfaction with their experience.

Telehealth for inpatient care

As coronavirus cases surged across the U.S., hospitals and medical centers used telehealth for inpatient care as a way to prioritize the safety and well-being of patients and medical staff:

Virtual rounding reduced the number of frontline workers entering a patient's room by allowing doctors to see and treat patients from the hallway using mobile devices

Hospitals could bring in specialists from around the world to virtually consult on a patient's care

Family members could stay involved with patient care, ask questions, and communicate virtually with providers

In the most difficult situations, including end-of-life care, video communications gave family members the ability to spend precious time with their loved ones in the hospital

Other telehealth benefits

Expanding telehealth helped strengthen public health systems and improve health equity by reaching populations that have long been underserved or struggled with access to care. People living in rural areas, patients lacking reliable transportation or the ability to take time off work, and those with medical conditions that made it difficult to leave the house can now get care when and how it's most convenient for them.

In addition to enabling quality care delivery, telehealth has changed the competitive landscape for private healthcare, giving providers opportunities to provide cost-effective, convenient care to an increased number of patients. This introduces new revenue streams while allowing providers to save money, address resource shortages, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly consumer-driven healthcare market.

After COVID: Preparing for the future of telehealth

We don't know when the COVID-19 pandemic will be over, or what the world will look like once it is. What most experts agree on is that 2020 has transformed the global medical landscape. Patients and providers alike are now more familiar and comfortable with telehealth, so it's hard to imagine asking them to go back to the way things were.

So, what can providers do to prepare for the future of healthcare? First, assume the demand for telehealth is only going to grow. Consumer adoption of telehealth more than tripled from 11% in 2019 to 46% as of April 2020, and Frost & Sullivan predicts the telehealth market will see a sevenfold growth rate by 2025.

If you deployed your telehealth program in response to COVID-19, now's the time to move your approach from reactionary to strategic. Continue to build a competitive program of telehealth capabilities and offerings, enabled by a robust digital platform, to reach more patients and gain market share.

Your telehealth solution should:

Have high-quality, reliable audio and video, so you can communicate with, examine, diagnose, monitor, and treat patients virtually, even those with low bandwidth or outdated devices

Meet all your clinical and administrative needs, including integration with patient charts, medical devices, diagnostic tools, and other clinical applications, to streamline patient care

Enable HIPAA/PIPEDA compliance, with rigorous attention to keeping patient data secure and private

Have a user-friendly, easy-to-access experience that accommodates all patients, including those with special accessibility needs and low digital literacy

Offer flexible options and capabilities that support your practice's customized workflows

Telehealth will continue to play a major role in a hybrid model of care that emphasizes treating patients where and how they prefer - at home, on the go, or in person. With this shift, the industry will reduce costs, waste fewer resources, increase access to care, and improve patient outcomes.
Learn more about Zoom for telehealth and discover how hospitals, health systems, and providers are using Zoom to improve patient care and experience.

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Transforming the Medical Landscape: Telehealth Before, During & After COVID-19 - Zoom Blog

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Sometimes, innovation is driven by necessity. The worst global health crisis in 100 years forced the healthcare community to change where and how it cares for patients, and telehealth has risen to play a number of critical roles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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COVID-19 and the need for stronger domestic supply chains

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COVID-19 and the need for stronger domestic supply chains

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The single major weakness of most supply chains is an inability to react to a sudden and massive large-scale disruption. Due to the U.S. having supply chains abroad for many industries there was a shortage of goods as the supply chains froze due to COVID-19. A greater emphasis on building a stronger domestic supply chain would strengthen the U.S. ability to deal with unpredictable events such as COVID-19.

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As much as we'd like to believe that our supply chains are both quick enough to react to major disruption and flexible enough to maneuver around major obstacles, the global pandemic has taught us that often isn't the case. It is the single major weakness of most supply chains, an inability to react to a sudden and massive large-scale disruption, which can include pandemics (such as Covid-19) massive weather events, and a myriad of other setbacks. This lack of resiliency is most notable in supply chains for life sciences, health care, and food industries in particular.

The Chinese market is massive, for one thing, and most companies can't afford to withdraw completely, otherwise, they might lose any competitive edge they might have had.

After COVID broke loose around the world, the current administration issued a call for companies that have offshored their production to Asia, (China, in particular) to bring it back stateside. However, for many companies, this proves to be challenging and counterproductive. The Chinese market is massive, for one thing, and most companies can't afford to withdraw completely, otherwise, they might lose any competitive edge they might have had. Additionally, because the Chinese market is now either the dominant, if not sole source, for thousands of different items, reducing the dependence on those goods will take a significant amount of both time and money.

Reshoring wouldn't necessarily mean resiliency either. The meat shortage in the United States is a perfect example of this. The industry's supply chain is entirely domestic. In an attempt to reduce costs, many companies focused on consolidating manufacturing activities, which means a smaller number of slaughter and processing plants are now producing much of the beef and pork products consumed in the United States. This created a vulnerability as shutting down one plant, even for a few weeks, creates a major impact throughout the country. Farmers, who get paid to raise the feedstock, are now stuck with taking a potentially devastating loss on their products while the rest of the country faces months of meat shortages.

Remap instead of Retreat

Instead of retreating outright from the forign market, the best approach to building resilience into the supply chain is by conducting an internal audit. More specifically it's the process of mapping out the layers of suppliers, manufacturing plants, distributors, and the other various elements of the logistics network and then implementing a stress test to evaluate the ability to recover from the disruption of any of the various links. Understanding where various bottlenecks will occur means being able to create mitigation strategies which can include increasing manufacturing capabilities, adding more suppliers to the roster, or building up buffer stock.

The added advantage to mapping and stress testing the supply chain is that companies using this method can find unexpected weaknesses or high risks throughout the organization. The more complex the produced good is, the higher the risk of utter disruption.

"Work that one of us (David) did with the Ford Motor Company found unexpected high risk associated with small suppliers, including many local suppliers. One part it identified that fell into this category was a low-cost sensor widely used in its vehicles: If the supply of it were disrupted, the carmaker would need to shut down its manufacturing operations. Because the total amount spent on this item was low, Ford's procurement group had not paid much attention to it," reads a recent article from HBR.

Stress Testing on a Policy Level

Essential industries, such as pharmaceuticals and health care, need to have a level of government involvement to ensure that supply chains are resilient enough to continue operating, even during the worst-case scenario. Consider the mask and hospital supply shortage when the pandemic first started to hit the United States. While panic buying created part of the problem, the supply chain itself faltered and eventually failed under the crushing demand.

If such a test can be conducted for banks, it can similarly be conducted for all life-critical supply chains.

There is a precedent for such involvement, however. Back in 2008, during the recession, the U.S. government and the European Union conducted a stress test for banks to guarantee that the major financial institutions that prop up the entire financial system, could survive a major crisis. If such a test can be conducted for banks, it can similarly be conducted for all life-critical supply chains.

The Long Road to Resiliency

Creating supply chain resilience for essential products and services here in the United States could very well require domestic manufacturing. But that's neither an easy nor cheap fix. Take the pharmaceutical industry, for example. Of the drugs sold in Europe, more than 80% of the required chemical components are manufactured in China and India. Because chemical production is a significant environmental hazard, it would require the development of clean technology and manufacturing processes to create a domestic supply chain. This process could take upwards of 10 years and would require a hefty financial investment. Could it be done? Absolutely. But not easy, and not cheap.

However, until companies have a full comprehension of the vulnerabilities throughout their supply chain, these kinds of decisions can't be made. The pandemic has created an excellent opportunity and, perhaps more importantly, a motive to put in the necessary time, energy, and resources. Only then can they protect their supply chain from a potential devastating disruption that may be lurking on the horizon.

Do you have supply chain questions that you need answered? Do you need help bolstering your current supply chain to handle these new and disruptive global situations? Feel free to contact one of our logistics experts today and lets talk more about it today.

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Understanding The Need For A Stronger Supply Chain - The Logistics Blog

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As much as we'd like to believe that our supply chains are both quick enough to react to major disruption and flexible enough to maneuver around major obstacles, the global pandemic has taught us that often isn't the case. It is the single major weakness of most supply chains, an inability to react to a [...]

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With research and analysis of various studies regarding race and COVID-19, issues that were consistently brought up weren't caused by COVID-19 but instead brought these issues to the whole country's surface to witness. There has never been a time in America's history where so many eyes have been placed on America's inner cities and impoverished areas. It'll start with prison reforms, to have fathers not be sentenced unfairly based on the color of their skin so they can be fathers to raise their children. It starts with educating our law enforcement on interactions with minorities. It begins with the government providing more opportunities for young minorities in these cities to draw away from the crime-driven streets. COVID-19 may have been a blessing in disguise for America because more individuals are willing to help with so many eyes on these inner cities.

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COVID-19 Brings to Light to impoverished America

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COVID-19 Brings to Light to impoverished America

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While much of our friends and relatives live in middle-class America and experience much hardship with the spread, America's inner cities were hit the hardest. So bad that children who rely on schools for their meals were left starved, families barely able to make ends meet being laid off, and crime rates increasing with young teens being out of school.

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COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter movement

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COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter movement

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While most of America was on lockdown, emerging was the protests against police brutality, specifically after the death of George Floyd. Many individuals blame protests in major cities as the cause for the spread of COVID-19, but an article from Healthline debunks this myth.

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Experts say the outdoor demonstrations were in the sun and wind. In addition, people were in motion and most were wearing masks. Getty Images

There isn't evidence that Black Lives Matter protests have led to a noticeable increase in COVID-19 cases, despite early concerns from health officials.

The reasons for the lack of transmission likely have to do with the protesters being outside in the wind and sun and most of them wearing masks.

People who attend other outdoor events, such as going to the beach or a ball game, tend to share indoor facilities like bathrooms, shops, and restaurants.

All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 outbreak.
It's an issue brought up by many people who support the reopening of businesses and the return of large gatherings in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If there wasn't an outcry about the spread of the novel coronavirus during the Black Lives Matter protests in late May and early June, why was there one when people returned to restaurants, nail salons, bars, and beaches?

Weren't the protests a potential "super spreader" of COVID-19?

It's a concern public health officials initially raised.

"I do think there's potential for this to be, unfortunately, a seeding event," Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Congress June 4.

So have the Black Lives Matter protests led to a noticeable increase in COVID-19 cases?

And if not, what has made them different from events such as a concert or a large wedding?

Experts say the short answer to the first question is no.

They say the answer to the second question reveals useful tips on what activities may be lower risk and how to participate in them safely as the country continues to balance a desire to return to normal with staying healthy.

The protests began after a video of the killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police officers sparked widespread condemnation and outrage.

Streets in cities across the United States as well as around the world filled with demonstrators.

People who had been told to limit activities outside the home in order to reduce the spread of the virus were now gathered in large groups and shouting, potentially spreading droplets containing the virus to the people around them.

Those protests have resulted in some reforms in how cities and school districts use police departments, as well as the removal of some symbols seen as emblematic of the country's systemic racism.

One thing they don't appear to have caused, though, is an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

A paper looking at virus data from protests between May 26 and June 20, found "no evidence that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset."

"We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived," the authors of the National Bureau of Economic Research paper wrote.

That lines up with what others have seen in various cities.

"I have not seen any peer-reviewed research linking outdoor protests (or really any major outdoor events) to the surge here in Texas," said Rodney Rohde, PhD, an associate dean for research at Texas State's College of Health Professions who focuses on public health microbiology.

Texas had been one of the first states to start reopening - including indoor facilities such as bars and movie theaters. But the surge of COVID-19 cases in recent weeks has led to a reimposition of some lockdown measures and a requirement in some regions to wear face masks when in public.

The COVID-19 spike in Texas is likely tied to the reopening, not the protests, Rohde said.

"One can look at the time frame post-protests regarding case counts, hospitalizations, and mortality to see if there may be a correlation. I have not seen that in my observations," Rohde told Healthline.

"However, if one looks to the research literature regarding 'opening up too soon' and gatherings in restaurants, bars, or similar locations... then we do see some published research around surges in cases and hospitalization, including some super spreader events," he added.

Rohde noted that "we are not in a second wave. We are just seeing a surge of cases from the first wave after we had flattened the curve."

In New York City, where the protests led to a citywide curfew, the story was similar.

Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, director of Columbia University's climate and health program, has been leading modeling projects over the past several months to project how the virus is likely to spread.

In the wake of the protests, he did some modeling to try to understand how much they might contribute to the spread.

The protests were outdoors, mostly during the day, and appeared to have a high proportion of people wearing masks. The models ran three scenarios based on how much these factors might have been able to reduce transmission: most, least, and moderate.

"If we saw a moderate-sized reduction in transmissibility, we still would have seen a small spike," Sharman told Healthline. "But we didn't see that."

Now, 6 weeks after the protests began, the New York COVID-19 case numbers seem to line up with the model's predictions about what would happen had transmission been low at the protests.

"There wasn't any change in case numbers that could be really attributed to an anomaly like the protests," Shaman said. "And logically it doesn't make sense that there would be."

There are a couple of elements to that logic.

The biggest factor is the protests were outdoors.

There's also the fact that people were largely moving and exposed to the sun and wind.

"In general, being outdoors does help, due to fresh circulation of air and the antiviral effects of the UV in sunlight, as well as the virus's fragile nature with desiccation," Rohde said. "This doesn't mean the virus can't be transmitted outdoors, but it's certainly better than being in enclosed, indoor spaces with lots of people and low air turnover."

But there are nuances as to why these protests might have been safe while attending an outdoor event like, say, a baseball game or concert might not be.

Memorial Day crowds at some beaches and parks sparked criticism - and led to cities such as Los Angeles and Miami closing beaches for the Fourth of July weekend.

But it's not necessarily being at the beach with other people that is the problem, Shaman said.

It's the facilities and interactions that are part of many people's trips to the beach.

"Going back to beaches and Memorial Day, my opinion is people out at the beach is not a big deal," he said. "But ice cream shops, walking on a boardwalk without masks, going into the restaurants [becomes a problem]. So, in other words, it's really the indoor dynamic that is problematic."

He called out bars especially, where it's usually necessary to be in close proximity to others and to shout - and spread droplets - over music and chatter.

The same would apply to a ball game or concert. Even though you'd be mostly outside, you'd be sharing bathrooms, shops, and walkways with others.

And even when outside, you'd be mostly stationary and in a stadium that's blocking much of the wind and sun, Shaman said - conditions that weren't a part of the protests.

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covid19 coronavirus surge cases black lives matter protests

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Black Lives Matter Protests Didn't Contribute to the COVID-19 Surge

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There isn't evidence that Black Lives Matter protests have led to a noticeable increase in COVID-19 cases, despite early concerns from health officials. The reasons for the lack of transmission likely have to do with the protesters being outside in the wind and sun and most of them wearing masks.

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How lack of a lockdown strategy for vulnerable migrant workers lead to the spread of Covid-19 as they made their way back to their often previously spared rural villages.

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Migrant workers in Mumbai waiting to board a train home to rural Bihar in May. Tens of millions poured out of India's cities.

Migrant workers in Mumbai waiting to board a train home to rural Bihar in May. Tens of millions poured out of India's cities. Credit...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's coronavirus restrictions sent migrant workers fleeing. To get them home, the government offered special trains. But the trains would spread the virus across the country.

SURAT, India - The crowds surged through the gates, fought their way up the stairs of the 160-year-old station, poured across the platforms and engulfed the trains.

It was May 5, around 10 a.m. Surat was beastly hot, 106 degrees. Thousands of migrant laborers were frantic to leave - loom operators, diamond polishers, mechanics, truck drivers, cooks, cleaners, the backbone of Surat's economy. Two of them were Rabindra and Prafulla Behera, brothers and textile workers, who had arrived in Surat a decade ago in search of opportunity and were now fleeing disease and death.

Rabindra stepped aboard carrying a bag stuffed with chapatis. His older brother, Prafulla, clattered in behind, dragging a plastic suitcase packed with pencils, toys, lipstick for his wife and 13 dresses for his girls.

"You really think we should be doing this?" Prafulla asked.

"What else are we going to do?" Rabindra said. "We have nothing to eat and our money's out."

They were among tens of millions of migrant workers stranded without work or food after Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a national coronavirus lockdown in March. By spring and summer, these workers were so desperate that the government provided emergency trains to carry them back to their home villages. The trains were called Shramik Specials, because shramik means "laborer" in Hindi.

But they became the virus trains.

India has now reported more coronavirus cases than any country beside the United States. And it has become clear that the special trains operated by the government to ease suffering - and to counteract a disastrous lack of lockdown planning - instead played a significant role in spreading the coronavirus into almost every corner of the country.

The trains became contagion zones: Every passenger was supposed to be screened for Covid-19 before boarding but few if any were tested. Social distancing, if promised, was nonexistent, as men pressed into passenger cars for journeys that could last days. Then the trains disgorged passengers into distant villages, in regions that before had few if any coronavirus cases.

One of those places was Ganjam, a lush, rural district on the Bay of Bengal, where the Behera brothers disembarked after their crowded trip from Surat. Untouched by the virus, Ganjam soon became one of India's most heavily infected rural districts after the migrants started returning.

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Farmers in Ganjam, a rural district that was untouched by the virus until workers began to return.

Many people in Ganjam's villages had no idea what coronavirus symptoms were - until people around them started dying.

"There was a very direct correlation between the active Covid cases and the trains," said Keerthi Vasan V., a district-level civil servant in Ganjam. "It was obvious that the returnees brought the virus."

The tragic irony is that Mr. Modi's lockdown inadvertently unlocked an exodus of tens of millions. His government and especially his Covid-19 task force, dominated by upper-caste Hindus, never adequately contemplated how shutting down the economy and quarantining 1.3 billion people would introduce desperation, then panic and then chaos for millions of migrant workers at the heart of Indian industry.

A top economic adviser to Mr. Modi, Sanjeev Sanyal, confirmed that the administration had been aware of the risks posed by moving people from urban hot spots to rural areas but said that the situation had been managed "quite well."

Railroad officials also insist that the trains were the safest way to get migrant workers home.

"India has done extraordinarily well in managing the spread of disease compared to some of the materially most advanced countries of the world," said D.J. Narain, a Ministry of Railways spokesman.

In all, the government organized 4,621 Shramik Specials, moving more than 6 million people. As they poured out of India's cities, which were becoming hot spots, many returnees dragged the virus with them, yet they kept coming. Surat, an industrial hub, saw more than half a million workers leave on the trains.

"It felt like doomsday," said Ram Singhasan, a ticket collector. "When you saw how many people were thronged outside, it looked like the end of the world was coming."

On March 24, at 8 p.m., Mr. Modi hit the lockdown switch. In a televised address, he ordered the entire nation to stay inside their homes for three weeks - starting in four hours.

The decision was pure Modi: sudden, dramatic and firm, like when he abruptly wiped out nearly 90 percent of India's currency bills in 2016, a bolt-from-the-blue measure that he said was necessary to fight corruption but proved economically devastating.

Prafulla and Rabindra Behera had just finished a dinner of rice, lentils and potatoes, their usual fare. They lived in squalid, bare rooms in Surat's industrial zone, sleeping wall to wall on the floor with a half dozen other laborers. Within minutes of Mr. Modi's address, they started getting calls.

"Everyone was thinking the same: This will be over soon and somehow we'll pass the days," Rabindra said.

At the time, India had fewer than 600 known virus cases.

Many experts have criticized Mr. Modi's government for overlooking the plight of migrant laborers, who suddenly had no work, no income and no support network in the cities. The government's Covid-19 task force lacked migrant specialists and was hardly representative of India. Of its 21 members, only two were women and the rest were largely upper-caste men. Many of the migrant laborers came from lower castes and economically underprivileged backgrounds.

Harsh Vardhan, India's health minister, responded by saying that "not even in our wildest imaginations do we think about the caste" and that the task force's members had been chosen for their "competence, capabilities and intellectual abilities."

Mr. Modi's lockdown closed all public transport, and immediately, some migrants began walking hundreds of miles, desperate to return to their home villages, where living was cheaper and they could find family support. After Mr. Modi declared a second lockdown in mid-April, the stream of migrants turned into a humanitarian disaster.

Tens of millions poured out of the cities, and India's airwaves were dominated by horrific scenes of migrants and their families dying along the roads, from thirst, heat, hunger and exhaustion.

In New Delhi, railroad officials concluded there was no way to stop the migrants, said Arun Kumar, the head of the railroad police.

"And we knew that one day or another we would have to carry them," he said.

India's railroads ferried more than 8 billion passengers a year before the pandemic, traversing a network of 42,253 miles of track, enough to go around the earth nearly twice. It's one of the world's busiest train networks, the blood vessels of this country. Pressure was growing on Mr. Modi to use it.

Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Odisha state, which includes Ganjam, said he spoke to Mr. Modi about the plight of migrants.

"I knew that in this chronic situation that they would want to come home," Mr. Patnaik said. The trains, he said, were the answer, but he emphasized that the key thing would be to bring back the workers "gradually."

In Surat, the Behera brothers were down to their last bag of rice. They could not work - the factories were closed. But they weren't allowed to leave the city, where virus cases were beginning to surge.

"We were trapped," Rabindra said.

On May 1, India's Labor Day, the railways ministry made a grand announcement: Shramik Specials. Routes were drawn up from Surat, Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and other cities deep into rural areas.

But Prafulla Behera, 39, was reluctant to get on a train. There was no work back in Ganjam - that's why he had left in the first place.

Prafulla was respected back home, known to be both strong and affectionate. He never complained about having four daughters, even though just about everyone in the village wants sons. His younger brother, Rabindra, 32, usually did what Prafulla asked.

But this time, Rabindra pushed back.

"If we're going to die," Rabindra said, "we should die at home."

The Behera brothers rode for 27 hours across the width of India, about a thousand miles, in a second-class, non-air-conditioned train packed to capacity. The heat seemed to be getting to Prafulla. During the journey, he complained of having a fever.

They stepped off in Ganjam on May 6, around 1 p.m., exhausted and dehydrated, among the first wave of migrants to return.

Far from any major city, Ganjam is a socially conservative, underdeveloped district with endless rice fields, empty beaches, squiggly Candy Land roads and a long tradition of its people pulling for each other. Initially, the news that loved ones were coming home was greeted with excitement.

"There was no fear," said Santosh Kumar Padhy, a block chairman. "The villagers were planning welcome ceremonies."

Ganjam's officials hurriedly converted hundreds of schools into quarantine centers, drafted a work force of 10,000 people and adapted their freight train station to handle the Shramik Specials, which were longer than typical passenger trains.

The Beheras were told they would quarantine for 21 days at a center and each was given a toothbrush, a slice of soap, a bucket to wash with and a thin sheet to sleep on.

But the next morning, Prafulla awoke with a splitting headache. A doctor didn't think he had coronavirus but suggested, as a precaution, that he be moved into the courtyard, away from the other men.

The following morning, Prafulla could barely breathe and called his wife on his cellphone.

"Come and bring the girls," he whispered. "I need to see you."

An hour later, he was dead. A subsequent test revealed that Prafulla Behera was Ganjam's first coronavirus death.

Across the district, people began falling sick. The first dedicated Covid-19 hospital, with fewer than 60 intensive care beds, quickly filled; patients had to be laid out on the floors.

Testing was still relatively low but when authorities zeroed in on suspected carriers they found high positivity rates. After Prafulla's death, Rabindra and six other men who had traveled with him were tested. Six out of seven tested positive.

But the Shramik Specials kept coming - four, five, six, sometimes 16 a day, each carrying as many as 2,000 migrants, many from Surat.

Across India, state leaders were under pressure from voters urging them to rescue stranded family members. Yet some recognized that the trains could mean trouble.

"It will lead to a spike in Covid-19 cases," predicted Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal's chief minister, in late May. "Who will take the responsibility then?"

A group of researchers at one of India's most prestigious universities, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, submitted a scientific paper in May, which was published a few months later, predicting that virus cases in Bihar, a rural state, would jump by 800 percent when migrants returned.

In New Delhi, health officials warned against packing the trains. There was no way to test most passengers. India was performing about 70,000 tests a day in early May, far fewer than the number of migrants lined up on train platforms some mornings.

Passengers were supposed to undergo temperature checks with laser thermometers. Middle seats were supposed to be empty for social distancing.

But in Ganjam, trains arrived "more than 100 percent" full, said Vijay Amruta Kulange, Ganjam's collector, the top civil servant in the district.

Ganjam, with a population of around 3.5 million, was absorbing as many as 20,000 migrants a day and didn't have enough schools to hold everyone. At one overcrowded center, migrants mutinied, smashing light bulbs and jamming toilets with plastic bottles, trying to be freed. To open up more space, the authorities dropped the quarantine period from 21 days to seven.

At the district's first Covid-19 hospital, Dr. Umashankar Mishra said that at one point, the oxygen supply for 200 patients came within 15 minutes of running out. Dr. Mishra called the suppliers in a panic, only to learn that the truck carrying the oxygen cylinders was stuck at a railroad crossing.

"I never felt so bad in my life," Dr. Mishra recalled.

When the truck finally arrived, Dr. Mishra bear-hugged one cylinder and waddled into intensive care.

If the truck had arrived any later, he said, "it would have been a massacre."

Workers at the quarantine centers were among the first to get infected. An entire group of cooks in Konkarada village came down with body aches.

"We thought it was from working too hard," said Bonita Pradhan, one of the cooks.

She tested positive, as did nine out of 10 of the other cooks. A broader survey in Konkarada found that 80 out of 100 people were coronavirus positive.

Across India, the same crisis unfolded: Poor communities, with few hospitals, witnessed sharp spikes in infections weeks after the Shramik Specials arrived.

"For the virus to reach villages, it needed a carrier, a speedy one," said Thekkekara Jacob John, a senior virologist in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. "Then came the migrants, and particularly those who traveled by train. They wreaked havoc, wherever they went, unintentionally."

In two rural districts in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, infections surged and are now above 40,000 cases, more than twice India's per capita average. Similar surges were reported in states such as Nagaland, Bihar, Assam and, especially, in Chhattisgarh.

"Eighty percent of deaths and infections have happened in the rural areas after the arrival of the migrants," said Tribhuwaneshwar Saran Singh Deo, a minister in Chhattisgarh's state government. "The first mistake the central policymakers made was not checking the migrants at the station where they started from. The second was to open the flood gates all at once."

In Bihar, state health officials said returning migrants were responsible for 70 percent of the first wave of infections.

"The quarantine centers turned into coronavirus hubs," said Dr. Raj Kishore Chaudhary, a Bihar health official. "If asymptomatic patients would leave the center without getting detected, the cases would shoot up in areas where they lived."

By the end of June, dozens of villages in Ganjam had been sealed off. Residents were ordered to stay inside. Police officers patrolled the silent lanes.

Taxis were converted into ambulances. Volunteers sewed masks, cooked food and answered help calls. At the quarantine centers, schoolteachers led yoga classes. The whole district was mobilized and straining.

"Imagine people are coming at 2 or 3 a.m. in the night, you receive them, register them, give them their kits, arrange where they will be staying. Doing all this, one gets tired," admitted Naba Krishna Jena, an officer in the Ganjam government. "So when the crowd grew so big, compromises happened. And because of those compromises, the infections happened and spread."

The trains finally stopped coming to Ganjam on June 30. By then, officials had raised the quarantine period back to 14 days and opened other Covid hospitals but the outbreak was already out of control.

In late June, Simanchal Satapathy, a popular teacher who became a champion for the rights of the migrants at the quarantine center that he oversaw, was admitted to a hospital but misdiagnosed three times: first with malaria, then pneumonia, then tuberculosis.

It wasn't until a week after Mr. Satapathy, 26, came down with a high fever that he was tested for coronavirus. He was positive and soon died.

"I used to cradle him as a baby," said his uncle, Pradeep Kumar Satapathy, breaking down. "We had no idea he had Covid."

Ganjam's caseload peaked in August and, overall, the district has reported 22,000 cases and 320 deaths, roughly the national average, according to Dr. Mishra, the physician who ran its Covid-19 hospital.

Mr. Kulange, the district's top official, said Ganjam would have recorded "single-digit cases" had the migrants not come back.

"It was clear cut," he said.

Most cases in Ganjam caused only mild symptoms and did not require hospitalization. But no one is certain of the district's real death toll, just as that figure remains a mystery across the country. India has reported far fewer virus deaths per capita than many Western nations, but experts caution that 80 percent of all deaths in the country are not medically certified.

Mr. Patnaik, Odisha's chief minister, said the Modi administration should have run the trains "in a more humane way" and before infections became so rampant in the cities.

But he, too, agreed that once the migration started, it was impossible to stop.

"This being a free country, I don't think there was any way of controlling it," he said.

Railroad officials said they had worked their hardest to safely transport 6.3 million people "in the most trying circumstances."

When asked to respond to the data showing that the virus had spread rapidly in many districts after the trains arrived, Mr. Narain, the railroad spokesman, said much was still unknown about Covid-19 and "correlation of every kind is not necessarily causation."

Mr. Vardhan, the health minister, said that the Modi administration had started the trains as soon as it could, given that states needed time to prepare quarantine centers first.

Opposition politicians have pushed for a parliamentary inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic but members of Mr. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party have blocked them. In October, India's Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit calling for an independent investigation.

In Ganjam, the scars are still fresh.

The home where Mr. Satapathy, the teacher, lived with his parents is now deserted. After he was told that his son had died, Mr. Satapathy's father went to the market, paid off his debts and came home with a rope. He hanged himself from a tree.

Mr. Satapathy's mother also killed herself. She was found hanging from a ceiling fan.

Rabindra Behera eventually returned to Surat, by train. His brother had been right: There was no work in Ganjam. And now Prafulla Behera's widow and four daughters have no one to support them.

The plastic suitcase that Prafulla brought home, packed with gifts, was destroyed at the quarantine center. His daughters never got their 13 dresses.

Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj reported from Surat and Ganjam, Sameer Yasir from Surat and Karan Deep Singh from New Delhi. Hari Kumar and Emily Schmall contributed reporting from New Delhi.

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The Virus Trains: How Lockdown Chaos Spread Covid-19 Across India

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Migrant workers in Mumbai waiting to board a train home to rural Bihar in May. Tens of millions poured out of India's cities. Credit... Prime Minister Narendra Modi's coronavirus restrictions sent migrant workers fleeing. To get them home, the government offered special trains. But the trains would spread the virus across the country.

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It is crucial to start preparing for the next pandemic now to ensure a better and faster response.

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COVID-19 will not be the world's last health emergency and there is an urgent need for sustainable health emergency preparedness to deal with the next one.

This was the strong sentiment shared by participants of the United Nations General Assembly side-event on 'Sustainable preparedness for health security and resilience: Adopting a whole-of-society approach and breaking the "panic-then-forget" cycle'. The high-level virtual event was co-hosted by Finland, France and Indonesia, along with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Past crises have shown that once an outbreak is under control, governments and donors tend to turn their attention to other pressing concerns. This cycle of "panic-then-forget" has prevented the development of effective health emergency preparedness across the globe. The world needs to break this cycle once and for all.

This week, the world crossed a grim milestone with over a million lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many more expected to have died from unprecedented disruptions to the health systems.

"Over the years we have had many reports, reviews and recommendations all saying the same thing: the world is not prepared for a pandemic. COVID-19 has laid bare the truth: when the time came, the world was still not ready," said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in his opening address. He called for investing in preparedness, with an all-of-government and all-of-society approach. "This will not be the last pandemic, nor the last global health emergency. But with the right political and financial investments now, we can advance health security, prevent and mitigate future pandemics, and protect our future and the future of generations to come," he said.

Countries spoke of their commitment to health emergency preparedness. "We know that preparedness makes economic sense, and we have developed tools and models for multi-sectoral cooperation. Learning from the pandemic and building on the previous progress should guide our steps to strengthen Health Security and thus help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," said Päivi Sillanaukee, Ambassador for Health and Wellbeing, Republic of Finland.

"There is an urgent need to leverage the response to COVID-19 to build, maintain and strengthen sustainable public health capacities for emergency preparedness [...] France firmly believes that preparedness deserves to be placed much higher on the foreign policy agenda and we are willing to foster cooperation among Member States to ensure the continued visibility of this topic, whether here in Geneva or at the UNGA in New York," said Stéphanie Seydoux, Ambassador for Global Health, French Republic.

Health emergency preparedness is part of the larger vision of health for all. In her speech, Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Retno L.P. Marsudi, reminded participants that "the investment we must make at the national level now is ensuring affordable health care for all. Let us ask ourselves, how many times have we heard of people denying themselves of much needed medical health care due to costs.... The issue of affordable health care for all is at the heart of Indonesia's chairmanship of the Foreign Policy and Global Health initiative."

Also sharing their countries' experience with COVID-19 were the Ministers of Health of the Netherlands, Oman, Senegal and Singapore. Speaking to this issue as well were the Coordinator of the Group of African Ambassadors in Geneva, and Germany's Deputy Director-General, Federal Foreign Office. The discussion was led by Ambassador Hasan Kleib of Indonesia in Geneva.

Stressing the role of community empowerment was the President of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mr Francesco Rocca. He said his organization had learned from working with its network of responders in 192 countries that there is an urgent need to invest in preparedness at the community level, to "promote humanitarian action to be as local as possible, as global as necessary [...] We call on governments, partners and donors to invest in preparedness at the community level to save lives and alleviate suffering in the next inevitable emergency."

The role of parliaments and the importance of a multisectoral approach was highlighted by the Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mr Martin Chungong. The International Association of National Public Health Institutes, and the European Commission's Directorate General for Development and Cooperation emphasized the important role played by partner organizations in country and global preparedness and financing.

Mr Sami Kanaan, the Mayor of Geneva, stressed an all-of-society approach. "Local governments must not only be provided with the means to implement policies. They also need to be included in the international debates that eventually shape solutions to the humanity's most pressing challenges," he said.

Closing the event, Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, appreciated the participants' remarks, and asked for them to be met with sustained commitment to preparedness. "We cannot, cannot, cannot let the world forget because the next one may not be anything but the worst one," he said. "This (COVID-19) may just be a harbinger of what may come, we are living with too much risk."

This event marked a crucial dialogue among countries, donors and partners on building back better for future emergency preparedness during the current COVID-19 pandemic, and beyond. It comes on the heels of the release of a sobering report by the Global Preparedness and Monitoring Board that also called for urgent action in this area.

According to the report, investments in preparedness would only cost US$ 5 per person annually, whereas the cost of this pandemic is already over US$ 11 trillion and counting.

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The best time to prevent the next pandemic is now: countries join voices for better emergency preparedness

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COVID-19 will not be the world's last health emergency and there is an urgent need for sustainable health emergency preparedness to deal with the next one. This was the strong sentiment shared by participants of the United Nations General Assembly side-event on 'Sustainable preparedness for health security and resilience: Adopting a whole-of-society approach and breaking the "panic-then-forget" cycle'.

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Companies still hiring during Covid-19 - Here are 103 that want your applications Now

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Companies still hiring during Covid-19 - Here are 103 that want your applications Now

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by Rebecca Piccardo THE MUSE
This is a good source for career opportunities promoted during the pandemic and seeing how companies promote their brand.

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There's a lot of uncertainty around work right now with the COVID-19 pandemic-especially if you're a job seeker still trying to make progress in your search or if you've just been laid off. But a lot of companies are still hiring during this coronavirus crisis-and they need to fill essential roles more than ever.

From account manager at Unilever to content strategist at Clearlink, there are a variety of roles and opportunities available in a mix of industries-not only in the grocery and healthcare spaces (though there are plenty of roles there, too).

Browse through these companies and their open positions-now's the time to apply.
(Note: We will continue to update this list throughout this crisis.)
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Success Academy Charter Schools

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Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

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Here at The Muse, we partner with a lot of great companies to bring you insider looks at their offices and awesome job listings. These employers pay us to be featured on the site, but these Muse-worthy brands made this list not just because they want to be included, but because their culture, policies, and employee feedback showed us that they deserve to be.

Think your company should be on a list like this? Learn more and get in touch!

Originally from Venezuela, Rebeca studied mass communications and journalism at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. Before joining The Muse, Rebeca was a staff writer at South Florida Sun Sentinel, where she wrote about breaking news and crime, and then worked as an editorial assistant at Interval International, where she created and edited content for all global editions of the company's travel publication, Interval World magazine.

More from Rebeca Piccardo

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78 Companies That Are Still Hiring During COVID-19

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There's a lot of uncertainty around work right now with the COVID-19 pandemic-especially if you're a job seeker still trying to make progress in your search or if you've just been laid off. But a lot of companies are still hiring during this coronavirus crisis-and they need to fill essential roles more than ever.

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Nations United:Urgent Solutions for Urgent Times

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Nations United:Urgent Solutions for Urgent Times

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This YouTube video features the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the ugency to take ACTION for change.

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Hi Everyone! This is a short article from NPR which gives some insight into how differently the Biden and Trump administrations plan to handle the new COVID vaccine.

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High-ranking officials, including President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Pence, are making preparations to get the coronavirus vaccine, hoping to instill trust and confidence in the vaccine ahead of its widespread distribution as the death toll climbs to new heights.

Biden, who is set be inaugurated to the White House on Jan. 20, said on Tuesday it was recommended he get the vaccine "sooner than later" by infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will become the Democrat's chief medical adviser.

"I want to just make sure we do it by the numbers. When I do it, you'll have notice, and we'll do it publicly," Biden said.

Pence, the outgoing Republican vice president, and his team are discussing options for how and when he will receive a COVID-19 vaccine, an aide to Pence tells NPR's Tamara Keith.

President Trump, who has hailed the speed of vaccine development as among his greatest presidential achievements, has not yet publicly said when he plans to be vaccinated.

A 2016 policy on continuity of government protocols provides for executive branch leaders to receive the vaccine quickly, and public health officials have said that public demonstrations of elected leaders getting the vaccine can help Americans hesitant about its safety overcome their fears.

But on Sunday, Trump tweeted: "People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary. I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time."

When asked on Tuesday about possible timing of when the president might get the vaccine, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany would not commit to when he would do so nor whether he would do it publicly.

She said Trump already has antibodies to the virus because of his treatment for COVID-19 in the fall, and he wanted to make sure that front-line health care workers and people who are vulnerable to the virus get the vaccine first.

McEnany said some senior administration officials would get the vaccine publicly, with announcements on that plan coming in the next few days. She said Trump would take the vaccine when health experts and his White House doctor tell him it's appropriate.

A recent poll by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist found that 61% of Americans plan to get vaccinated, up from 49% in September.

The Trump administration made a point of fast-tracking vaccine development, and the Food and Drug Administration last week authorized emergency use of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech after endorsement by an advisory panel and clinical trials showing 95% effectiveness. The first vaccinations in the U.S. began on Monday.

On Tuesday, the FDA reported that a separate vaccine from drugmaker Moderna was 94% effective overall.

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Biden, Pence Make Preparations To Get COVID-19 Vaccine

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High-ranking officials, including President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Pence, are making preparations to get the coronavirus vaccine, hoping to instill trust and confidence in the vaccine ahead of its widespread distribution as the death toll climbs to new heights. Biden, who is set be inaugurated to the White House on Jan.

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According to a study on the use of information and communication technology in secondary schools, the student to computer ratio is 150:1 in government and government-aided schools in India. Hence very few students in these schools get to learn about technology or experience it. As an outcome, even when online classes started in these schools, both students and teachers were facing massive complications in coping with technology and with these virtual platforms. Also those children who do not have access to devices might face a huge learning crisis in future, as a result, we might get to see higher dropout rates.

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Hey Everybody!
Here is a Gratitude poster for all the Corona warriors.

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Hello everybody! Below I have attached two links which would provide more information regarding the digital divide in India

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/how-covid-19-deepens-the-digital-education-divide-in-india/
https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/covid-19-lockdown-highlights-indias-digital-divide/

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Hello everyone! This is a Gratitude E - card that I have made for all the corona warriors.