News from the School of Public Health

After top HHS coronavirus vaccine doctor Rick Bright was fired by the Trump administration, Dean Boris Lusniak, former acting US surgeon general, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that public health experts in government walk a fine line.

Cyndi Kershaw, an undergraduate teaching assistant program coordinator for the School of Public Health, is making cloth masks to help to stop the spread of COVID-19. Cyndi has made over 100 masks and counting, with delivery spanning across the US from Maryland to California. She is asking everyone to donate funds in lieu of payment to the UMD Student Crisis Fund, which has given over $570,000 to 1,200 students over the past few weeks.

South Korea has limited the introduction of the pandemic better than any other country. How have they done that? Have they been able to keep the economy going during the pandemic?

Cloth masks can help protect you against COVID-19, the American Chemical Society explained in Reactions, its science video series. 

Don Milton, professor of environmental health and guest on the video, told ACS that the idea of the virus being transmitted droplet versus airborne is an artificial paradigm. 

“There’s a gradient,” Milton said. “It’s not that there’s aerosols and droplets and they’re two different things. There’s droplets and then there’s smaller droplets.”

At a time when the pandemic is reshaping life in unpredictable ways and solid information is more vital than ever, University of Maryland students—or the bots they’ve created and deployed—are working to send accurate, easily understandable answers to your COVID-19 questions right to your phone.

Kimberly Stinchcomb, a master's in environmental health alumna, is working to fight the COVID-19 pandemic here in Prince George’s County. Stinchcomb is an emergency preparedness consultant for the UMD Center for Health and Homeland Security, and is contracted to the Prince George’s County Health Department. Her job is to plan for public health emergencies like this one through trainings and exercises, outreach and grant management.