Feature
STAYING SALUS STRONG A Lot of Planning and a Little Luck in the Long Battle Against COVID-19
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hen Salus University president Michael Mittelman, OD ’80, MPH, MBA, FAAO, FACHE, traveled to China in December 2019, he started seeing articles about a new virus called COVID-19 that was concerning Chinese health officials. As a healthcare professional, Dr. Mittelman kept tracking the spread of the virus when he returned home and continued to do so through the first few months of 2020. He suggested in his
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SALUS UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE
weekly messages to students, faculty, and staff, that it was just a matter of time before the virus would have to be more directly confronted in the United States. And, it wasn’t long before it happened. The University issued its initial COVID-19 guidelines on March 5, 2020, followed by travel and meeting restrictions for employees five days later; and announced didactic instruction would go online. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf shut down the state on March 13 and sent all non-essential personnel to work
from home, suggesting the virus could be under control within a few weeks. “I didn’t think it was only going to last the two weeks that Gov. Wolf had suggested. I thought we’d go eight to 10 weeks, we’d get this thing in the bag and then we’d slowly be able to get back to normal,” said Dr. Mittelman. But, in addition to the safety of the Salus family, an immediate concern was how would the University keep educating its students during the pandemic? Quite effectively, it turned out, under
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HOPE DALUISIO
