write article in about 120 to 150 words on impact of covid 19 on students.
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On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), the presence of numerous cases of an unknown pneumonia-like disease that presented like flu in Wuhan City, Hubei Province in China (1). After virus isolation and analysis of the viral genome sequence from the lower respiratory tract samples of infected patients, a novel coronavirus named severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2 was identified and subsequently named COVID-19 by the WHO (1). A month after its emergence, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and a day later, the United States (US) declared the disease a public health emergency (2). By May 27, 2020, the WHO had confirmed 5,488 million cases of COVID-19 in over 180 countries, with about 1.634 million of those cases occurring in the US (3, 4).
With no successful vaccine or treatment available, and in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19, most governments around the world, including the US, authorized unprecedented social containment measures. These measures, among others, included social distancing and the temporary physical closure of educational institutions. Educational institutions had to adopt a digital approach to instruction and student learning, dramatically transitioning traditional in-person classroom instruction to predominantly distance learning where teaching is provided remotely on digital platforms. At present, there are over 300 college and university closures in the US, affecting millions of students (5). While distance learning is not a new approach to instruction and learning at Georgia State University's (GSU) School of Public Health (SPH), the unplanned, rapid, and uncertain duration of the approach, is presenting challenges and taking a toll on students at all academic levels. Not much information on best practices was available to guide such abrupt transitions to college education. The purpose of this study was to collect information on how the transition to distance learning impacted undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in public health at GSU. The goal was to identify student academic challenges and unforeseen benefits of distance learning, and to use that information to inform practices that can be implemented during future crises that impact university education.