Below is the full response from university spokesperson Karen Peart regarding what the university is doing to combat Covid-19 locally.
Based on guidance from Yale experts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, the university has taken bold actions to prevent and slow the spread of COVID-19 for our campus and the broader communities of which we are a part. In addition, members of the university and Yale New Haven Health System are meeting with local officials regularly to share information and update one another on our response plans. Yale’s wide-ranging efforts include working on several fronts to support New Haven community members and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the message to the Yale community on March 26 about raising $5 million toward the newly established Yale Community for New Haven Fund, which we have set up in consultation with both the United Way of Greater New Haven and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. The university put $1 million into the fund, and we will fully match every dollar given by faculty, students, and staff up to our $5 million goal. The fund will be managed by Yale’s Office of New Haven Affairs and overseen by an advisory committee. We will begin distributions as soon as possible.
University Properties has suspended March and April base rent payments for over 100 city businesses located in university-owned buildings. In addition, Lauren Zucker, associate vice president for New Haven Affairs and University Properties, and her office are actively working with local merchants and Yale tenants to help our community get through these challenging times. She is connecting struggling merchants with the Small Business Association, which facilitates assistance loans and grants for entrepreneurs. Her office keeps Yale tenants informed of government financial relief programs and of city and state conference calls about the pandemic. We also are promoting a gift-card-buying initiative to support the downtown shops and restaurants and their employees.
Yale Hospitality remains dedicated to honoring its longstanding tradition of donating food to soup kitchens such as the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) and Haven’s Harvest. It continues to donate food to DESK and Harvest during the pandemic, and it has committed to providing organizations serving those experiencing homelessness in New Haven with to-go box meals, prepared dishes, and whole food items. To help support the local economy, Yale Hospitality also has increased food purchases from local vendors.
Yale is maintaining the salaries of the 6,000 New Haven residents who work at the university and is donating personal protective equipment to local hospitals via a massive effort coordinated by Yale Environmental Health and Safety. The university also is supporting vital research on COVID-19 and sharing knowledge about the pandemic with the Yale and New Haven communities. Seven experts from Yale and the City of New Haven held a virtual town hall on March 18 to inform the public and policymakers on the latest developments in the COVID-19 pandemic. Yale held its first town hall to address the outbreak on February 6.
At the Yale School of Public Health, faculty and student volunteers are performing contact tracing to help track and mitigate virus spread in New Haven and the Yale community. The school’s research teams are developing models of the pandemic that will help direct resources to the most urgent needs. Public health faculty members are serving as consultants for New Haven community leaders to help address issues such as seniors in crowded housing, food insecurity, and homelessness. The school is also working with the United Way of Greater New Haven on a community volunteer initiative that provides online tutoring for K-12 students and food distribution for community members.
Yale School of Nursing (YSN) is leading vital work to address the pandemic. More than 300 YSN faculty, students, and staff have volunteered to provide support during a possible surge of cases. As necessary and appropriate, they would help with triaging, drive-by testing, bedside care, and support tasks. YSN is developing a text-message-based survey to track local healthcare workers who have been exposed to or diagnosed with COVID-19—this tool will help New Haven health systems plan for workforce needs if cases in the city continue to climb. Nursing students and faculty, along with medical and physician assistants students, continue to work at HAVEN Free Clinic, providing tele-health care and primary care. YSN is working with state and national partners, including licensing boards, to ensure that educational guidelines will allow all nursing students to continue in their educational progression, so they can stay on track to join the health workforce.
Yale School of Medicine researchers are deeply focused on COVID-19, including studying how the novel coronavirus infects cells, how the immune system responds, and ways of disrupting that process. The School of Medicine’s Clinical Virology Laboratory developed testing for COVID-19 in-house, enabling rapid testing for health care workers. Yale researchers are also exploring how patients’ genetics affect outcomes, initiating clinical studies for new therapies, and developing new ways of quickly producing essential medical equipment. To coordinate these and related efforts, the university has established a COVID-19 Response Coordination team (CoReCT).
Yale has established a field hospital in Payne Whitney Gymnasium’s Lanman Center as an extension of the Yale Health Center to treat members of the university community who might become ill with COVID-19. This would reduce the number of people who might otherwise go to local hospitals or clinics. This benefits New Haven as a whole by easing the strain on these health facilities. In addition, Yale is exploring ways to make the center available to people beyond the university community. The Lanman Center will fall under Yale Health’s license to deliver acute care, so it is limited by the state to serving members of the Yale community.
As we continue to practice social distancing, Yale is providing New Haven residents and people from around the world over 40 free online university courses, such as Professor Laurie Santos’ popular “Science of Well-Being” Coursera class. In addition, the university is hosting webinars and other resources to help people cope with stress and feelings of loneliness.
New Haven is Yale’s home, and the efforts I mention here are only some of the ways we are working with the city to get through this crisis together. We recognize that the pandemic is evolving rapidly, and we will continue to consult with public health and medical experts and local and federal officials as we adapt our response plans and strategies. Our priorities will remain centered on the well-being of our campus and home communities.
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