Community Workers Lend Human Connection To COVID-19 Response

To help senior citizens through the coronavirus pandemic, teens and young adults are teaching the older people in their communities how to utilize technology. From "using FaceTime, finding reputable news on Facebook, and ordering groceries online," the skills these young volunteers are teaching help bridge the gap between social distancing and isolation.

One positive side effect of the encouraged social distancing due to the novel coronavirus outbreak is the shift to telemedicine, specifically the chance to have therapy sessions over phone and video calls. At one health center in the Houston area, about 90% of its typically 2,000 weekly appointments have made the transition to online.

As more individuals are hospitalized and in critical condition from COVID19, religious leaders are finding unique ways to connect. While the norm may be to be at bedsides, in this unprecedented time where that isn’t possible, chaplains, rabbis, and priests are using FaceTime and texting to connect with members of their communities and offer prayer and blessings.

At nursing homes in the Long Island area, facilities and their staff have stepped up to ensure residents can use technology to stay connected. They have facilitated performances over Zoom, local school-children send videos to say hello, and lectures and games have been made available online, as well.

Many flight attendants for Scandinavian Airlines have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic but are now being given the opportunity to retrain as healthcare providers. The laid-off crew members already have emergency medical training and are "trained in how to handle difficult interpersonal situation," which makes the move to nursing homes and hospitals an almost natural transition.

Across the world, many senior citizens have been cut off from access to normal routines and ways of community due to the coronavirus pandemic, but communities and organizations are working to fill the void. In Belgium, robots are being used in retirement homes to combat isolation, while in Germany, employees of a soccer club are shopping for the elderly.

While the media mostly highlights the top-down, government-led measures of containment happening in Wuhan, China, an invisible, sophisticated grassroots network has also had a powerful positive effect on stemming the tide of infection. Using social media and apps like WeChat, neighbors helped each other find food and medicine, support the sick among them, and simply survive.

To better trace the spread of coronavirus, Singapore and China have been using apps that collect data about citizens' whereabouts and let people know if they've potentially been in contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the virus. Now, similar apps are being piloted in New York and Massachusettes in an attempt to better "understand more about the clinical course of the disease."

The CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service Program trains individuals how to perform contact tracing in order to help slow the spread of infectious diseases. Success from this strategy has been reported in South Korea regarding the coronavirus, and now the U.S. officers are deploying to find out more about "how contagious it is, how it spreads, the severity of the illness, what groups are most likely to be affected."

Some of the governments that have had the most success in getting a handle on the spread of the coronavirus have used individual location data to conduct contact tracing and track the spread of the virus. However, some in Europe and the United States worry these tools violate privacy rights, even in the midst of a public health crisis.