ANU and UC step up to help in coronavirus response

ANU dean of the College of Health and Medicine, professor Russell Gruen, said it was one of many things the university was working on to help the ACT and Australia respond to the pandemic.

"I don't have a crystal ball, but we are working on an exit strategy," professor Gruen said.

He said the National Centre for Epidemiology and Public Health was developing models and plans for what the triggers will be and what the surveillance plan would involve to ensure the virus wasn't making a comeback.

In addition to an exit strategy, professor Gruen said the John Curtin School of Medical Research was developing new tests and "participating in the development of vaccines and therapeutics".

Professor Gruen oversees the ANU Medical School, the Research School of Psychology, the John Curtin School of Medical Research, and the Research School of Population Health which, he said, trains the "crack squad".

"They're like the special services in disaster and pandemic response," he said.

All the schools have been actively involved in the pandemic response in addition to their normal teaching duties.

"People have been amazing in the way they have stepped up," professor Gruen said.

"We're very much of the view that ANU serves the nation and the world, but it also has a major responsibility to serving the Canberra community."

ANU medical students are involved in contact tracing for confirmed cases of COVID-19, "learning new skills they wouldn't ordinarily learn and at the same time performing a valuable role for the community".

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Meanwhile, the University of Canberra has been playing an important role in the territory's pandemic response.

UC's head of its School of Nursing, Midwifery and Public Health, professor Karen Strickland, said they had created a range of online learning material available to staff to educate them in infection control, donning personal protective equipment and proper handwashing techniques.

The university's pharmacy department has been making hand sanitiser for staff and disinfectant.

Professor Strickland, who has been in home quarantine with her husband and son who arrived back from the UK last Tuesday, said the university had a long history of working in collaboration with ACT Health and other healthcare providers in the territory.

They've seconded staff to work within certain units at hospitals in the region to help the pandemic response.

"We still have an undergraduate curriculum to deliver and maintaining quality of learning and teaching to our students is a priority," professor Stickland said.

"But we have identified staff with skills that may be of use in this pandemic to support clinical colleagues."

Professor Strickland said looking forward, with the levels of anxiety in the community, nurses with mental health expertise were going to be called upon now and in the coming months more than ever.

"It is quite profound. We need to be thinking and planning, and we have that skillset in the university of those who are more than able to mobilise in that way," she said.

She said the pandemic had highlighted the critical role nurses and those on the frontline played in the community.

"When the World Health Organisation planned for this to be the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, I don't think anybody thought we would be living through an old-fashioned pandemic," she said.

"It has really highlighted the role of nurses within the community in a way that has never happened in my career."

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