Mask on: Warren Towers resident Cathy Cao (CGS’00), waiting on Comm Ave for a ride to the home of a friend in a Massachusetts suburb in mid-March. On Sunday Boston Mayor Martin Walsh asked all residents to start covering their faces when leaving their home. Photo by Cydney Scott

Public Health

Mayor Walsh Asks for De Facto Curfew, Tells Public to Cover Faces Outside Their Home

Also in our Coronavirus Monday Roundup: how to make a face mask, with or without sewing

If you have a question or comment related to BU and its response to the COVID-19 crisis, on the subject of the move-out, remote learning, retrieving personal belongings, or anything else, please visit Boston University’s special COVID-19 website. Questions are being answered there by specific departments in a timely fashion. Thank you.
—Doug Most, executive editor, BU Today

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Boston and Beyond News

Walsh calls on residents to stay home

Concerned about the predicted surge in COVID-19 cases in Boston, Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Sunday asked citizens to observe a voluntary curfew from 9 pm to 6 am, starting Monday, April 6, for everyone except essential workers. (Technically, this is a Department of Public Health advisory recommending people stay in their residence during those hours.) 

“It is what we do now over the next two weeks that will make a difference, for some people, between living and dying,” Walsh said.

The mayor also asked all residents to wear a face covering whenever leaving their home, starting Monday, through May 4. Face coverings can be a scarf, a bandanna, or another type of cloth that covers the mouth and nose. This matches the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation. The city is providing advice and resources for anyone who needs help getting or making a covering here.

Also effective Monday, Boston City Hall will be open to the public only on Tuesdays and Fridays, 9 am to 5 pm. Anyone entering the building will be subject to screening for COVID-19 symptoms, including elevated temperature.

Having previously expressed his frustration with lapses in social distancing, especially among young Bostonians, Walsh also announced that effective immediately, all city parks sports facilities, such as basketball courts and baseball diamonds, are closed. He reminded residents that Boston Police Department officers are empowered to disperse gatherings under the state advisory and can order people to vacate closed sections of parks if needed. Areas for passive recreation, such as walking and jogging, will remain open.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Walsh said, “but don’t just focus on the numbers going up. Think about the numbers we don’t see, think about the cases that you, individually, have stopped and the lives that you, individually, have saved, by doing the right thing.”

Mask-making 101

After reportedly sharp internal debate, the federal government now recommends that everyone wear a face mask while they are outside the home to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus. But with medical-quality masks in short supply even in many hospitals, putting doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients at deadly risk, regular citizens are being told to wear nonmedical cloth masks. For many, if not most, people, that means making one. And they’re here to help.

This YouTube video shows US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams making a mask that requires no sewing—or even cutting—just an old T-shirt or other piece of cotton cloth, plus a couple of rubber bands. (Word is, hair bands or ponytail ties may be more comfortable than plain old rubber bands.)

Sew and no-sew mask instructions, along with a variety of information about how and when to wear masks, are available from this CDC website.

Contact tracing to be stepped up in Massachusetts

“If you’ve had contact with someone infected with the coronavirus—whether you know it or not—expect a phone call.” WBUR reports that Massachusetts is launching what Governor Charlie Baker says is the only US effort to locate everyone who is at risk, get them tested, and then put them into quarantine or other care as needed. The commonwealth is teaming up with the Boston-based health care nonprofit Partners in Health to hire and train roughly 1,000 people to track down everyone in the Bay State who has had close contact with someone who has COVID-19. It’s a procedure that has worked in South Korea and other places to contain the spread of the virus, although Sandro Galea, dean of the BU School of Public Health and Robert A. Knox Professor, tells WBUR the current delays in getting test results may keep the program from being too effective.

Baker gives updates

On Sunday, Baker said 68,800 COVID-19 tests have been administered in the commonwealth, 5,800 tests on Friday alone. A free drive-through testing site exclusively for first responders opened Sunday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. At least 200 tests will be able to be performed daily at the site. The field hospital at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston is currently being set up. Another facility is being set up at Joint Base Cape Cod. The state is in discussions to establish a similar facility in western Massachusetts. The field hospital at the DCU Center in Worcester currently has 500 volunteers. And the commonwealth has received 100 ventilators from federal stockpiles and is deciding how to distribute them.

BU News

Student employee layoffs affect only one specific group

BU has formally laid off 1,636 students from non–federally funded part-time jobs who are unable to perform their jobs remotely because of the nature of the work. These include reception work, jobs at FitRec, office support, dining halls, work at events, and the like. But the layoffs, which included two weeks of pay, apply only to that group, whose jobs were typically funded by BU. The layoffs did not include students whose work-study jobs are funded in part by the federal government, or anyone else on campus. Students with federal work-study jobs will be paid for the remainder of the semester, whether or not they can work remotely. The University is required to notify state and city government of the layoffs, and those filings have resulted in some media coverage that may have led to confusion.

US & Global News

Fired from his command. Now sick too.

The captain who was removed from command of the coronavirus-stricken aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt by the administration—and cheered by his crew as he left the ship—has tested positive for COVID-19.

Now people have eye pain too

A contributing writer to the New York Times reports that, with care, studying Google searches can teach you about the COVID-19 pandemic—and he even thinks he’s spotted a previously unreported symptom. A pretty interesting big-data story.

Latest count of coronavirus cases

United States, 312,249; Massachusetts, 11,736. 

Distraction of the day

Red Sox fans know that Josh Kantor is the coolest ballpark organist around  (he’s played with Eddie Vedder and members of REM) and is highly approachable for requests. This writer once tweeted at him when freeloading in the General Electric box at Fenway, and he played “Electric Avenue.” Now, with baseball on hold, Kantor has started a daily afternoon performance called the 7th Inning Stretch via Facebook Livestream, complete with a nudge to listeners to donate to local food banks. Find the story about it that WGBH ran this weekend. Fun fact: Kantor worked in the library at the School of Law for several years in the 1990s.

Find BU Today’s latest coverage of the pandemic here. The University’s hotline for faculty, staff, students, and visiting scholars to call for referral of their virus-related medical concerns is 617-358-4990.