Boston University and other schools deploy robots so campuses can safely reopen during pandemic

Boston University has deployed a high-tech weapon in its fight to stop the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading across campus: robots.

Eight of them are currently processing some 6,000 coronavirus tests a day in a lab built and operated by researchers at UB – and they are delivering results the next day, NBC Boston reported.

“The fact that they bring him back to us for a negative test 24 hours later gives us the opportunity to go and practice as much as possible, so that’s great,” said freshman Brian Garrity, who plays lacrosse for school.

Other campuses also use robots to keep their students safe.

At the University of Texas at Austin, three “state-of-the-art” robots process hundreds of tests a day, at no cost to students. Nephron Pharmaceuticals donated a robot to the University of South Carolina to help the school perform saliva tests for COVID-19. And the University of Maryland has been using robots since April to process tests not only for the campus but also for the state.

A month earlier, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley made robots a key part of the COVID-19 diagnostic lab they created “from scratch,” capable of processing more than 1,000 tests per day.

At BU, there are four collection centers on campus that are open seven days a week, 12 hours a day, where students bask in, a process they say takes about five minutes.

To make sure students take the test correctly, BU posted an explanatory video on You Tube and dispatched observers to collection centers, university spokeswoman Rachel Lapal said.

So far, more than 8,000 tests have been carried out since July 27 and only 16 have tested positive. The count is published daily by BU on a data dashboard which was launched on Monday.

Students say the robots helped save the campus experience.

“I’m so grateful that I can keep this residential college experience that I’m paying for,” said second year student Tahliyah Tabron.

Many other students weren’t so lucky. Dozens of universities have sent students home for the semester or switched to virtual classrooms after new clusters of coronavirus infections began to explode on campuses across the country when students started returning home. last week.

The University of West Virginia reported 11 new positive cases at its Morgantown campus on Friday, bringing the total number since resumption of classes to 114 students and four faculty or staff.

And the University of Notre Dame, which this week closed in-person classroom instruction for two weeks, has reported 337 cases of COVID-19 since August 3. Among those infected were several players from the Irish combat soccer team.

“Don’t make us write obituaries,” read the headline of the Notre Dame student newspaper editorial on Friday, which criticized students for partying during the pandemic and school leaders for reopening the campus too early.

“The University administration has largely blamed the COVID-19 outbreak on students attending off-campus parties,” the Observer editorial read. “While not entirely out of place, it was used to deflect responsibility from the very administrations that insisted they were ready for us to return to campus.”

The Daily Tar Heel, which is the student newspaper for the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, also slammed school officials in a biting editorial this week for not anticipating that students would be “reckless” but used even more colorful language in its title. UNC on Monday became the first university in the country to switch to virtual learning and send its students home for the remainder of the semester.

Nationwide, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases was over 5.6 million and the death toll as of Friday morning was over 175,000, according to NBC News figures.

The United States, which dominates the world in both categories, has accounted for about a quarter of the nearly 22.7 million cases and more than a fifth of the nearly 800,000 deaths worldwide. But in recent days, countries like Brazil and India have also reported even more deaths than the United States and countries that appeared to be in control of the pandemic like Poland set records with 903 new cases on Friday.

In other developments:

• The unexpected jump in the number of initial jobless claims Thursday to over one million came after the Paycheck Protection Program stopped accepting claims and shows the need for a renewed stimulus for small businesses and consumers, advocates and business owners told NBC News. “The PPP loan program has been very helpful for most small businesses in supporting business operations,” said Holly Wade of the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center. “However, many small business owners are still a long way from pre-COVID sales levels.” And as those relief funds run out, jobs and businesses themselves are at risk, she said. More than 23 million jobs were lost when the pandemic struck.

• Two days after Florida recorded its 10,000th death from the coronavirus, the state reported that a 6-year-old girl from Hillsborough County had died from COVID-19. She is the eighth – and youngest – child to die from the virus in Florida since the pandemic began, The Tampa Bay Times reported. His death was recorded as teachers across the state remained opposed to Governor Ron DeSantis’ plans to resume teaching in person by the end of the month. Most of the new cases and deaths in Florida have been since DeSantis, at the behest of President Trump, began reopening the state in May.
• Texas has reported more than 11,000 coronavirus deaths. As of Friday afternoon, it had reported 11,247 Covid deaths and 587,491 confirmed cases, according to NBC News figures. New York still leads the country with 33,688 deaths, followed by New Jersey with 15,933. New York and New Jersey racked up thousands of deaths in the early days of the pandemic, as health officials still tried. to find a strategy to stop the spread. Texas began to see a dramatic increase in the number of new cases and deaths after it reopened, like Florida, before the coronavirus began to rise.
• Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt, who became America’s most famous nun four years ago when the Chicago Loyola University Ramblers basketball team had an unexpected but ultimately futile run for a championship of the NCAA, celebrated its 101st birthday online Thursday. She gave advice in the event of a pandemic to “wear these masks, wash your hands, keep this distance”. Schmidt, who remains the chaplain to his favorite team, said something good will come out of all the suffering the United States has endured as a result of the pandemic. “I think we’re going to respect each other in a different way and take care of each other in a different way,” she said. “You see people in one neighborhood collecting food for another neighborhood that really needs it. They never thought about it before. They give generously. Some people rarely know their neighbors, but it brings them closer. The problem of racism that we have, we are going to be better at social justice and equality.

Nigel chiwaya contributed.