Ford Motor Co. and Wayne State University physicians are rolling out mobile testing units this week. A partnership between the carmaker, WSU, and the Wayne State University Physician Group will yield hundreds of new daily COVID-19 test kits for symptomatic first responders, health care workers and corrections officers. A first of its kind in the state, the testing will be done with the help of Lincoln Navigators fully equipped with staff and medical kits provided by the university. “This support for those on the front lines of the pandemic is critical, and we felt we needed to respond urgently by testing first responders and health care workers with drive-through testing,” said Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson. “Now we can expand our efforts with ‘drive-to’ testing for those first responders across the region who lack access to testing. We are extremely grateful to Ford for helping us expand this initiative and bring mobile testing to these high-risk individuals, and to the United Way for its support of both our drive-through and drive-to initiatives.”

As the realization that we were going into an extended period of lockdown began to dawn, a frenzy of questions started flying around the internet. Many people were wondering what it might mean for our romantic lives, from whether we should still date while social distancing to how to practice safe sex during the pandemic. But what about at an emotional level? What should we do to keep our relationships happy and healthy during the pandemic? In the absence of a loved one, something physically sent by them can help. Katheryn Maguire, a professor in the department of communication at Wayne State University, talks about the remedying effects of a “good old-fashioned handwritten letter.” “There is something special about holding something they held,” she says. “The paper was in their hand; you see their writing, if they wear perfume [you can smell it], that makes it very present.” In fact, isolating together brings its own stresses. One thing that long-distance relationships can teach us then is there is something about segmenting your life: being together and focused on each other when you are, and being apart and focused on that,” says Maguire. Maguire concludes that if the only problem you have is being away from each other – well, that’s a really good sign. Likewise, couples isolating together should remember that the stress of quarantine will pass.

As more Michiganders file for unemployment and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay at home order is extended through April 30, the question now turns to how do we get Michigan open again, when some of the restrictions are lifted and people can start going back to work? Everywhere you look it's like a ghost town. Businesses are closed and millions of people are looking for work. However, after all of this passes – how do businesses get back on track and bring customers back? How does Michigan open up again? "Well to put it into perspective, the Michigan economy has already taken a very hard hit," said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University. With hundreds of thousands of businesses closed across Michigan, the state's economy is feeling the pain. "Payroll has gone down from about 4.5 million to under 3.3 million," Masters said. "It’s estimated that in Michigan this quarter unemployment will jump to 24 percent." However, Masters says there is some hopeful news. Depending on when this pandemic starts to slow down, we could start seeing a resurgence of local businesses.

The coronavirus is pushing people to make a lot of tough choices. Dr. Teena Chopra, an infectious disease expert at Wayne State University, weighs in with a doctor's perspective on those choices and responds to listeners’ questions.

One month since Michigan’s first case of coronavirus, the pandemic is taking a far heavier toll on African-American communities statewide, from metro Detroit to Ypsilanti and Flint to Lansing. Nationwide, African Americans in cities such as Chicago, New Orleans and Milwaukee have been infected at greater rates, while the Associated Press reported this week that African Americans comprised 42 percent of the nation’s deaths where demographic data were made public, some 3,300 of 13,000. “I'm not surprised and in fact I would say that it's expected,” said Dr. M. Roy Wilson, an ophthalmologist and president of Wayne State University. I'm somewhat surprised that people are surprised.” Wilson, who worked on strategic planning on minority health and health disparities at the National Institutes for Health, said poverty and lower levels of education have left more minorities exposed to the virus through jobs that can’t be done from home. African Americans also are more likely to have a harder time with the virus because of underlying health conditions, Wilson said. Wilson said those underlying conditions create a quicker sequence, or cadence, from “morbidity to mortality.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic moves into high gear in Michigan, thousands of frontline hospital workers are facing increasing stress, fatigue and frustration going into the second month of the public health crisis that is projected to kill more than 2,000 in the state over the next several weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed flaws and vulnerabilities in how government responds to pandemics and how hospitals staff, supply and deliver health care to populations they serve. Some medical experts fear once the current emergency is over, political leaders and hospital executives will go back to bickering over holding down budget deficits and rising health care costs instead of focusing on real solutions. They say permanent changes in health care delivery and financing should be made because future killer outbreaks should be expected. "Inertia is a powerful force. (After a crisis is over), people tend to step back to their baseline position," said Mark Schweitzer, M.D., incoming dean of the Wayne State University School of Medicine. "I hope we learn from this and change." Teena Chopra, M.D., DMC's corporate director of epidemiology, said COVID-19 has exposed Detroit's broken public health system and fragile health care infrastructure. She said high incidence of chronic disease, poverty, low literacy rates and lack of trust in the medical system of many inner-city residents contributes to the high numbers of cases and hospitalizations in Detroit. "We will see even worse than what we are seeing today (last Thursday). We haven't peaked yet. We are going to see a lot of cases; we are going to see a lot more deaths. We are on the exponential phase of the epidemic curve," said Chopra, who also is a professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

A growing number of influential physicians and scientists are getting behind an effort to use the blood of those who have recovered from COVID-19 to help others battle the deadly disease. For more than 100 years, health care providers have used the liquid part of the blood, known as plasma, from those who have recovered from illnesses to help those stricken with the Spanish Flu, H1N1, SARS and more. That's why a group of physicians and scientists from 57 institutions in 46 states including Michigan are hoping plasma will help prevent and treat COVID-19 — especially since there have been 1.8 million confirmed cases and more than 113,000 deaths around the world as of Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center are considering a clinical trial involving plasma that is part of the project, said Dr. Robert Sherwin, director of ResearchOne at WSU's School of Medicine. This is exciting to Sherwin, who is also an emergency room physician at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, because he is taking care of patients in a world he likens to a war zone at a hospital that has been among the most overwhelmed. “There is essentially no specific proven therapies right now, and we really have nothing to offer these patients with any definitive confidence that it will improve their outcome," Sherwin said. "It's frustrating and heartbreaking. Everyone is an emotional wreck because of this right now. Not because of lack of efforts, but out of pure frustration. The disease is winning."

Some physicians, but not all, are reporting that hospitals are now discharging more patients with the coronavirus to recover at home than seeing new patients in emergency rooms. These reports might be a hopeful sign that the surge in COVID-19 cases may be nearing its peak. While some hospitals say they’re starting to see signs of the virus letting up, Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University who is also in charge of infection control for the Detroit Medical Center, said its hospital admissions for COVID-19 are still on the upswing. She cautioned against drawing early conclusions about flattening the curve and creating “false hope” that could prompt people to stop observing social distancing, ultimately leading to more lives lost. “We won’t be out of the woods until we have a vaccine,” she said.

Incoming Wayne State University medical school dean and vice president of health affairs Mark Schweitzer, M.D., has a unique perspective on how Michigan is coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, as he is living in New York City, the nation’s number one hot spot for coronavirus. Schweitzer, who plans to arrive in Detroit the week of April 23, was hired earlier this year after a national search to replace Jack Sobel, M.D., who is stepping down to resume patient are and research duties after five years of helping to turn around the WSU School of Medicine.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that more than $6 billion will be distributed immediately to colleges and universities nationwide to provide direct emergency cash grants to low-income students whose lives and educations have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. The funding is available through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The money can pay for expenses like course material, technology, food, health care, child care, and housing. Under the program, Michigan State University will get a minimum of $14.9 million in emergency funds, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor at least $12.6 million, and Wayne State University at least $9.6 million. “We have seen huge needs in our student population, from housing to food to all sorts of things,” said Dawn Medley, Wayne State University’s associate vice president for enrollment management. “We have a student emergency fund, but that fund has run dry…To have this money and especially the first part of the money to go to student aid is imperative.”

Elizabeth Stoycheff, associate professor of communication at Wayne State University, addresses privacy and security issues that have increased during the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced many to stay connected virtually. As a researcher who investigates how these issues affect the use of online platforms, Stoycheff outlines the differences between privacy and security and the different consequences for using videoconferencing platforms.

One month since Michigan’s first case of coronavirus, the pandemic is taking a far heavier toll on African American communities statewide, from metro Detroit to Ypsilanti and Flint to Lansing. An analysis of available public health data shows the disproportionate impact on African Americans has spread from southeast Michigan – a national hotspot for COVID-19 – to outstate. While data are limited, current statewide totals show 40% of Michigan’s nearly 1,000 coronavirus deaths are black. But the toll is likely higher since race is listed as “unknown” on 25% of all deaths; 14% of the state population is African American. Dr. M. Roy Wilson, an ophthalmologist and president of Wayne State University who worked on strategic planning on minority health and health disparities at the National Institutes for Health, said poverty and lower levels of education have left more minorities exposed to the virus through jobs that can’t be done from home. African Americans also are more likely to have a harder time with the virus because of underlying health conditions, Wilson said, noting that those underlying conditions create a quicker cadence from mobility to mortality. “During a pandemic, that cadence is going to be greatly accelerated and so whatever health care and health issues existed in normal times, whether it was on the lack of access to health care because of insurance or high prevalence of comorbid disease, all of that is going to be greatly magnified.”

For better or worse, we revisit our childhoods and the stories we tell about ourselves are rooted in childhood experience. Memories come out of experience, and so experiences shape the person we will become. There are concerns about the memories today’s children will be left with in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. To understand how to inoculate children against or cure bad memories, it’s helpful to understand when and how memory is developed, but children’s brains do not work like adult brains. “We’re learning concepts, but we may not have any conscious access to experiences we had maybe up to age three,” said Noa Ofen, memory researcher and associate professor of psychology at Wayne State University. “Very young children tend to remember a lot, but those memories tend to not be available readily when they’re older. There’s a very real phenomenon called childhood amnesia that’s well documented.”  

The city of Detroit announced that Wayne State University medical students will be running the COVID-19 test results of nursing home residents overnight. Mayor Mike Duggan said there are 27 nursing homes in Detroit and 14 have reported some rate of infection; there have been 12 deaths.

The city of Detroit announced that Wayne State University medical students will be running the COVID-19 test results of nursing home residents overnight. Mayor Mike Duggan said there are 27 nursing homes in Detroit and 14 have reported some rate of infection; there have been 12 deaths.

As COVID-19 deaths continue to rise, the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office is gearing up for the inevitable: more bodies than it can hold. To prepare for the surge, the morgue brought in two refrigerated trucks, another is expected this week, and a fourth arrives next week. The morgue can hold 300 bodies, and already has 200; the refrigerated trucks can hold about 35-40 bodies each. Mark Evely, director of the mortuary science program at Wayne State University, said the medical examiner’s office is properly planning for anticipated capacity issues, and addressed the additional precautions taken by funeral directors and funeral homes. “We as funeral directors, we believe very much in the value of having a funeral. We sympathize with the families who need that support of having people attend the funeral,” he said. “Not only have families lost a loved one, they’ve also lost the in-person support that they would have normally had from families and friends.” “

A coalition of about 50 labor groups is asking congressional leaders to reject Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi’s proposal for a new legal category that would allow the company to keep treating its workers as independent contractors while affording them partial employee benefits. Labor advocates have argued Uber does not provide as flexible a source of income as the company maintains. In a letter to Congress, Sanjukta Paul, an assistant law professor at Wayne State University, and Marshall Steinbaum, an assistant economics professor at the University of Utah, wrote that if the federal government pays for Uber and Lyft drivers’ unemployment insurance it should incentivize “states to side with the platforms on employment status, since doing so unlocks funds they would otherwise have to collect from the platforms.” The letter said that if the companies are not mandated to pay into a state’s unemployment funds as part of the stimulus act, they should be required to commit to reclassifying the workers as employees in exchange for the federal support.

A spike in the number of coronavirus cases in Detroit’s nursing homes is straining the region’s hospitals and is partially responsible for an uptick in the state’s already-high mortality rate. Now, public health officials are working to head off the kind of facility-based outbreak that has killed hundred of elderly nursing home residents in Seattle, New York and elsewhere. Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and a DMC epidemiologist, called the growing mortality rate among the region’s nursing home population “astonishing.” She estimated that about 60% of coronavirus-infected residents who are admitted to metro Detroit hospitals die, and that the population accounts for at least 25% of the region’s overall coronavirus deaths. The Detroit Health Department and Wayne State University are heading up a new citywide testing effort, with a goal of testing the entire resident population at one nursing home per day.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer plans to announce an extension of her stay-at-home order as public health officials recorded another 114 deaths from the coronavirus in Michigan in the past day. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported another 1,376 confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases to 20,346 and total deaths to 959 on April 8. Detroit has become a hot spot for the virus, and has continued to ramp up testing efforts. The city was set to start using its Abbott Laboratories rapid COVID-19 testing on residents and workers in nursing homes. For resident who can’t go to a test site, Wayne State University School of Medicine students will visit nursing homes to take samples, and then run the tests at night.

Stress isn’t just something that happens in your head – the effects reach almost every other part of your body. In simple terms, stress is the way your body responds to potential dangers. Stress is not inherently evil or bad for you, and is a biological response designed to help us successfully escape threats. In an ideal world, your body responds to stress and returns to its normal state – but in a less-than-ideal world, stress can become chronic and start to negatively impact your health. “People that are stressed may use food as a comfort,” said Dr. Joel Kahn, clinical professor of medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine. “You don’t usually eat much broccoli when you’re stressed. You’re usually grabbing for a doughnut and chips.”