Anti-Asian Racism Escalates During COVID-19
The pandemic has led to a sudden rise in discrimination against people of Asian descent.
![A resident wearing a face mask in Chinatown, San Francisco, is transporting groceries on a bike during the shelter-at-home Covid-19 crisis.](/sites/default/files/styles/news_card__image/public/2020-07/anti-asian-descrimination-covid-card_0.jpg)
University of California San Francisco
Give to UCSFThe pandemic has led to a sudden rise in discrimination against people of Asian descent.
With campuses closed, Joseph Kidane serves with hundreds of his fellow medical students in a volunteer crisis workforce.
Communities of color have been hit hardest by COVID-19. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in an outcry against police brutality. Both issues have roots in the same problem.
In 2020, as the world faces another new virus stoking fear and uncertainty, San Francisco may be uniquely up to the challenge. Strong ties between UCSF, local government agencies and community groups, forged in the fire of the AIDS epidemic, and a deep bench of infectious disease expertise, has helped the city flatten the curve and better understand this new disease.
We talked to UCSF epidemiologist George Rutherford, MD, and infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong, MD, about the CDC’s reversal on mask-wearing, the current science on how masks work, and what to consider when choosing a mask.
In response to the national outcry over law enforcement use of rubber bullets during ongoing protests of the death of George Floyd, the UCSF Department of Ophthalmology launched a virtual petition campaign calling for a stop to this practice, which can result in blindness and other severe eye injuries, even death.
UCSF epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists are partnering with several community organizations and the San Francisco Department of Public Health to offer comprehensive, voluntary COVID-19 testing to residents of the Bayview, Sunnydale and Visitacion Valley.
UCSF is launching a workforce training and technical assistance program in partnership with the California Department of Public Health to facilitate the training of thousands of individuals across the state in public health techniques and strategies, including contact tracing, case investigation and administration, to limit the ongoing spread of COVID-19.
A community-led project to provide comprehensive COVID-19 testing to residents, essential workers, and first responders in the town of Bolinas has determined that all of the 1,845 nasal and oral swab tests conducted in the community between April 20 and April 24 were negative for active infection with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
To ramp up contact tracing for COVID-19 in San Francisco, UCSF has been partnering with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) to provide technical assistance, training and manpower.
A new large-scale, long-term research collaboration aims to better understand the spread of COVID-19 across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Paramedics transport a mock patient into UCSF’s Mount Zion medical center during a drill. Photo by Noah Berger UCSF Health has opened 13 acute- and critical-care beds at its Mount Zion hospital as
UCSF pediatrician and epidemiologist, Elena Fuentes-Afflick, MD, MPH, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which honors exceptional scholars, leaders, artists and innovators. Fuentes-Afflick’s research has focused on the issues of acculturation, immigrant health and health disparities.
The Science Policy Group at UCSF has initiated a project to provide alcohol-based hand sanitizer to incarcerated populations, as well as people living in public or transitional housing or experiencing homelessness, with plans to distribute 15,000 bottles.