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The COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges for every business and every individual, creating a new reality.

It also provides an opportunity for creative solutions to maximize customer and employee service and value and ways in which each business can individually be of service to others, said Mark Lupo, a consultant with the Small Business Development Center at the University of Georgia.

“For small businesses, this can be a time to build relationships with customers and employees on a deeper level, by communicating that you care about them and are concerned for their safety,” Lupo said.

Business owners can demonstrate concern for employees and customers by:

Having adequate cleaning supplies, including the appropriate approved hand sanitizer, available for all customers and employees.

Putting up signs letting customers know the steps you are taking to provide for their safety and that of employees.

Reconsidering normal business hours and operations, even to the detriment of sales, in order to protect customers and employees from exposure to the virus.

Providing alternative access to products and services by offering delivery or letting customers purchase products online that they can easily pick up from the store.

Setting special store hours just for customers most vulnerable to the virus.

Limiting the number of people inside the business at any one time.

Using email and social media to communicate regularly with customers and employees so that they know of any change in operations.

Business owners can minimize the effects of the outbreak by:

Considering how to avoid layoffs or salary cuts during the downturn in revenue.

Being transparent with employees, understanding their anxiety.

Talking with banks or credit unions about potential cash flow shortfalls and what they can offer to help get through this period.

Asking suppliers about flexible payment terms for orders.

Seeking additional suppliers for products and services in case a vendor can no longer meet its commitment.

Consumers can support local businesses by:

Continuing to buy local, even online.

Cleaning their hands before entering businesses.

Maintaining a 6-foot distance between themselves and other people.

Minimizing time inside a business.

Staying home when they are sick.

The Small Business Development Center provides tools, training and resources to help small businesses grow and succeed. Designated as one of Georgia’s top providers of small business assistance, the SBDC has 17 offices located throughout the state to serve the needs of Georgia’s business community. The SBDC, a UGA Public Service and Outreach unit, is funded in part by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

In recent weeks, three Emory University experts in critical care medicine and infectious diseases have been at the center of a national effort to establish comprehensive federal guidelines on the care of patients with COVID-19.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines, which were released by the National Institutes of Health on Tuesday, April 21, include treatment recommendations for patients at all stages of illness severity, as well as for those who are not infected.

The three Emory doctors involved in the project were among 29 experts from across the country who spent the last several weeks sifting through published studies, reviewing the data for a broad range of drugs that have been touted as effective treatments and comparing strategies for managing the illness in a critical care setting.

“For decades, Emory has been at the forefront of treating infectious diseases, implementing clinical trials and developing protocols for treating critically ill patients,” says Greg Martin, MD, MSc, professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and committee chair for critical care at Grady Memorial Hospital. “We are fortunate to be in a position to bring our expertise to bear in helping develop these guidelines for treating patients with COVID-19.”

Martin participated in the group on treating patients in a critical care setting. Craig Coopersmith, MD, professor of surgery and interim director of the Emory Critical Care Center, participated in the group on severely ill patients and the use of potential therapies to modify the immune response such as immunomodulators and disease-modifying medications. Jeffrey Lennox, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory, helped to lead the group focusing on mild to moderate patients and the use of antiviral therapies in patients with COVID-19.

The ongoing pandemic has led to a surge in published case reports and studies as the medical research community worldwide has turned its attention to trying to understand COVID-19 and how to treat it. Part of the goal of the new guidelines is to distill the growing amount of research into a single resource that can be updated as scientific understanding as the illness evolves.

“When you see a study or case report out in the public domain mentioned without context, it is very hard for someone to ascertain whether it is legitimate or safe,” Martin says. “These guidelines represent an effort to create a resource that people can rely upon, informed by a critical review of the evidence we have to date.”

The group of experts split into four groups to develop clinically important recommendations that address potential therapies and encompass all patient types as well as special populations, such as pregnant women and children.

For the critical care group, Emory’s experience in treating patients in that setting provided a framework for the recommendations for managing treatment for critically ill patients with COVID-19.

“Emory has decades of experience treating similar conditions in a critical care setting that are now being used as a model for the care of COVID-19 patients,” Martin says. “We’re at the leading edge in developing and applying the current evidence on how you should manage a patient with COVID-19. You need to pay attention on how to use a mechanical ventilator, how you manage shock, and how to manage other cardiovascular, hematologic and neurologic complications of COVID-19. These are the foundations of Emory’s protocols.”

Coopersmith’s group spent much of their time discussing the evidence for using host-modifying agents to help combat the body’s immune response to COVID-19.

“For COVID-19, there is not yet any evidence that we can effectively manipulate the host immune response in a way that benefits the patient,” Coopersmith says. “When a patient is infected, it is not just the microbe itself that is causing the problem. Rather, it is a combination of the pathogen, and their own body’s response to the infection.”

Coopersmith, an expert on sepsis and the body’s response to such an infection, said his group reviewed small studies and case reports on the use of medicines that would modify the body’s response to the infection. Despite a high number of anecdotal published case reports, the group found insufficient data to recommend for or against the use of some such “host-modifying agents” outside the bounds of a clinical trial. For other drugs, the group expressly recommended against their use outside of a clinical trial.

“The reason we do randomized clinical trials is that outside of that structure, you don’t know how a patient would have done if you had not given them to drug,” Coopersmith explains. “It is incredibly important that efforts to test these drugs be directed into the framework of such a trial. Unfortunately, there is a long history in critical care of trying drugs that had a plausible biological rationale that turned out to be ineffective or even harmful. So even in the time of a pandemic, it is important to rigorously weigh available evidence in order to treat patients with therapies whose benefits outweigh their risks.”

Lennox, who is co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research Clinical Research Core, participated in a group that was tasked with reviewing the use of several antiretroviral drugs that are used for HIV patients. Their group also recommended that such drugs not be used outside of a clinical trial.

“Many of these medications can have potentially life-threatening drug interactions that need to be understood whenever they are prescribed,” says Lennox. “Until there’s sufficient evidence to show that these drugs can be efficacious against COVID-19, we believe they should be used only in a clinical trial.”

The guidelines will be updated regularly as new recommendations are made.

With tables wide apart and staff wearing masks, some Georgia restaurants reopened for limited dine-in service Monday as the state loosened more coronavirus restrictions, but many eateries remained closed amid concerns that serving in-house meals could put employees and customers at risk.

Read more at US News

The unprecedented challenges facing global health care systems as a result of COVID-19 reveal the urgent need for the global adoption of a data-driven, personalized approach to health and wellness, according to the Five Trends Driving the Emergence of the Personalized Health Ecosystem report. While organizations have long recognized the potential of technology to capture and use data to transform their industry, until now, they have lacked the “burning platform” that the pandemic provides to make changes imperative.

Pamela Spence, EY Global Health Sciences and Wellness Industry Leader, says:

“The human cost of the COVID-19 crisis is insurmountable and it has elevated the need to place health care on a different footing to proactively anticipate and manage the challenges that will emerge in the future. This will require organizations to rethink how health care is delivered and move toward a truly personalized, data-driven ecosystem. If organizations can seize the opportunity to sharpen their data strategies and refine their business models, they can position themselves to lead and demonstrate value.”

One of the trends the report explores is how the crisis has provided the urgency needed to accelerate the progress of new approaches and mindsets that will allow the transformation of health care. According to the report’s findings, if this transformation takes place, the health sciences and wellness industry could see a global approach to health that is not only effective against future infectious disease outbreaks, but also the slower-burning chronic disease crises, from diabetes and heart disease to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Global efforts to contain COVID-19 rapidly demonstrated that health care data are exponentially more powerful if they can be connected, combined and shared. However, in most geographies, data is trapped in siloes, fragmented across different systems and different organizations, making it impossible to rapidly integrate and analyze, and limiting the information’s effectiveness in assisting real-time health care efforts. According to the report, addressing this challenge requires a new way of thinking; organizations must focus less on owning and monetizing data and more on connecting and combining it to drive valuable insights that can transform health care.

There are still major challenges to realizing the vision of a personalized health ecosystem. The report outlines four additional trends organizations will need to focus their efforts to build a data-driven future:

With sensors in, on and around us 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) will create a new network for transforming health care: These technologies together will form the basis of a new network, essential to delivering health care. Sensors ubiquitously present, will provide rich, continuous stream of data via next-generation broadband networks for real-time AI analysis.

To personalize health, organizations must use data to understand and influence behavior: Behavioral science has proved among the most important mechanisms for defeating COVID-19, as governments have urged social distancing measures. Looking ahead, it will be critical for organizations to develop behavioral science tools in ways that can increase treatment efficacy and affordability. Bigger datasets and more powerful AI feedback loops will allow a better mix of products and personalized services and solutions for optimized health outcomes.

A trusted intelligence system is needed to secure the participation of the patient-consumer and other stakeholders: Trust and collaboration between stakeholders has been necessitated by the fight against COVID-19 but the underlying challenges regarding cybersecurity and AI remain. As connectivity is central to health care, developing a trusted cyber protection that can secure the necessary large-scale exchanges of data between stakeholders and AI systems that can analyze it, will be critical. 

Organizations must be decisive in the business model they choose to pursue in the future: Capital is likely to be even more constrained in the wake of the pandemic and organizations must move towards more focused business models to secure value in the future. For many organizations, the challenge post-COVID-19 will remain: to identify what business model they can best adopt and to acquire the data that will make them most effective in this area.

The full EY report is available at ey.com/fivetrendshealth.

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With performance venues still closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Atlanta arts groups continue to offer online and streaming content.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has unveiled the expansion of its Virtual Stage, which will showcase archival performances, musician videos, on demand concerts, insightful interviews and education programs. Each Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on the Virtual Stage, the ASO hosts an event such as interactive Watch Parties, Premieres and Listening Parties on Facebook and YouTube. Upcoming events include The Morehouse College Glee Club 109th Annual Concert (April 30); ASO Principal Trumpet Stuart Stephenson performs Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto at Home (May 7);  and Everything Lasts Forever with composer Michael Kurth, ASO, and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor (May 14).  Visit aso.org/VirtualStage for more information.

Dance lovers should check out Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre’s Ailey All Access, a free online initiative, featuring a series of weekly performance broadcasts, original short films created by the Ailey dancers, Ailey Extension dance and fitness classes and more. Full-length ballets are available every Thursday at 7 p.m. Visit www.alvinailey.org for a full schedule of events.

The Alliance Theatre will host a weeklong Virtual Play Club focusing on the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat as a catalyst for connectivity, creativity and civic participation. The Alliance was forced to cancel its full production of Sweat, directed by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, following the COVID-19 crisis, but the story and themes are still incredibly relevant for audiences to experience.  Patrons are encouraged to read the script (available for free on the Alliance’s website through May 1) and then virtually gather with family and friends using the “HOST YOUR OWN PLAY CLUB” guide to explore artistic and civic issues in Sweat. Then, on May 1st – International Labor Day – the Alliance will host a conversation with Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, Director, and Pearl Cleage, award winning Atlanta-based playwright, on Sweat and the role of theater in reflecting and creating in times of crisis, featuring guest appearances and commentary from Atlanta theater artists and community activists. Supplementary content, including articles, interviews, videos, and more, can also be found on the Sweat Virtual Play Club website at www.alliancetheatre.org/sweat.  RSVP is require to get the link to the live conversations.

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) has announced a new virtual programs, as well as expanded recommendations for at-home movie watching. Among the offerings, the AJFF In Conversation podcast and webinar foster dialogue around Jewish film culture, film artists and industry voices, and related themes. AJFF Playback celebrates the festival’s 20^th anniversary with a bracket-style retrospective that invites audiences to watch and then vote for favorite films from the AJFF vault. Meanwhile, AJFF continues to curate the best in international and independent cinema, offering ongoing viewing recommendations for housebound audiences during the coronavirus pandemic via AJFF.org and social channels. Check out the continuously updated blog here for picks of book to screen, movie musicals, food-focused films, and more.

The post ASO, Ailey, Alliance and AJFF offering online shows and events appeared first on Atlanta INtown Paper.

The state’s Department of Public Health reports that 129 Georgians have died from COVID-19 in the last 72 hours. The death toll as of 7 p.m. on April 28 stands at 1,036 and confirmed cases at 24,844. The new statistics come as the number of U.S. confirmed cases have surpassed 1 million and 58,947 Americans have died.

CNN reported today that Georgia is projected to see its number of daily COVID-19 deaths nearly double by early August, according to an updated model shared by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The projections for Georgia show the highest uptick in deaths per day will be between May and August.

The Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, a joint effort from Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and United Way of Greater Atlanta has said a fifth round of grants totaling $1.463 million will be distributed to 13 organizations for emergency response. A grand total of nearly $12 million from the fund has been mobilized to benefit 75 nonprofits to date. Grants made in the earlier rounds are detailed on both the Community Foundation’s website and United Way’s website. Some of the organizations receiving funding include KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools, Partners for HOME, Quality Care for Children, Southerners on New Ground, and Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Tomorrow’s News Today has a listing of metro Atlanta restaurants that reopened on April 27 after Gov. Brian Kemp’s order that dining rooms could reopen to customers. Many of the restaurants that have decided to open are corporate chain operations.

The post Georgia’s COVID-19 deaths surpass 1,000 and cases near 25k, plus more updates appeared first on Atlanta INtown Paper.

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