Articles from:April 2021

• COVID-19 outbreak declared over at Brock University

  Wednesday, April 21, 2021 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 21 April 2021 – R0051

  Niagara Region Public Health on Wednesday, April 21 declared the COVID-19 outbreak over in the student residences on campus at Brock University.

  The University has been working closely with Public Health after the outbreak of positive cases was first identified in late March.

  At that time, Brock took quick action and shut down virtually all on-campus areas as it moved back down to Brock Stage 1 (Grey/Lockdown) in its own pandemic recovery plan. The University and the Student Wellness and Accessibility Centre staff worked with Public Health to manage the outbreak investigation.

  Wednesday marked 14 days since the last risk for exposure on Brock’s campus associated with the outbreak, allowing Niagara Region Public Health to officially declare the outbreak over.

  “I would like to take this opportunity to thank our dedicated support staff and the entire Brock community that came together to address this outbreak and support our students at a time of need,” said Scott Johnstone, Senior Associate Vice-President, Infrastructure and Operations, and Chair of Brock’s Emergency Management Group. “We also want to thank Niagara Region Public Health for their guidance and work supporting us during this outbreak and throughout the past year.”

  Brock remains vigilant in the steps being taken to limit the spread of COVID-19 and to ensure the health and safety of its students, faculty and staff are a top priority.

  The University will remain in Brock Stage 1 as long as the provincewide lockdown continues, and the vast majority of courses are currently being delivered in an online format. All athletic facilities, computer labs, the library and other areas on campus remain closed.

  All Brock employees who are able to work remotely are doing so and for those who must be on campus, face coverings are required on all areas of campus. Access to campus is limited to two checkpoints — through the Rankin Family Pavilion and the east entrance of the Roy and Lois Cairns Health and Bioscience Research Complex.

  For more information on Brock’s COVID-19 response, please visit brocku.ca/coronavirus

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University [email protected] or 905-347-1970 

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock-led Twitter study finds balanced discussion about COVID in the general public

  Wednesday, April 21, 2021 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 21 April 2021 – R0050

  The protests look dramatic on TV: crowds of people clamouring for their rights and freedoms amidst business closures, curtailed socializing and mask wearing, among other restrictions.

  Does this discontent represent the wider views of Ontario residents regarding measures to stop the spread of COVID-19?

  Not necessarily, says new Brock University-led research.

  Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Antony Chum and graduate students Andrew Nielsen and Zachary Bellows have found that conversation in the general public is much more nuanced and balanced when it comes to views on pandemic measures.

  The research team used the social media platform Twitter to monitor and analyze Ontarians’ reactions to a range of pandemic restrictions including business and school closures, regional lockdown differences and other public health restrictions such as social distancing and masking.

  The researchers examined 1.5 million Tweets about COVID posted in Ontario between March 12 and Oct. 31, 2020.

  The team was looking for three trends: the volume of COVID-related Tweets, especially following major government announcements; the emotional tone of the posting; and the level of disagreement or polarization during Twitter discussions.

  An artificial intelligence-powered natural language processing program classified Tweets into positive, negative or neutral categories.

  The researchers discovered some interesting associations.

  “Our findings actually show that a partial lockdown is associated with more positive tweets compared to a provincewide lockdown,” says Nielsen, an Applied Health Sciences master’s student.

  “We believe this is the case because people were aware of their local infection rates, and would want their local policies to reflect their perceived level of danger,” he says, adding that many people agreed that areas with high infection rates should be under lockdown while other areas with low rates should be more open.

  Fellow Applied Health Sciences master’s student Zachery Bellows notes that, as expected, the volume of Tweets rose with new COVID-related announcements.

  “While there was a lot more discussion in general, we found that, overall, there weren’t too many people up in arms on either side,” he says.

  Chum, Bellows and Nielsen collaboratively conducted the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal JMIR Public Health and Surveillance.

  Other team members include Brock research associate Eddie Farrell, software engineer Pierre-Nicolas Durette, Professor Gerald Cupchik from the University of Toronto and Assistant Professor Juan M. Banda from Georgia State University.

  Highlights of their study, “Changes in public response associated with various COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario, Canada: an observational study using social media time series data,” include:

  • Higher new COVID-19 case counts in Ontario increased negative opinions; each additional 100 cases per day increased negative tweets by three per cent.
  • The effect of business closures on public opinion depended on the number of new COVID-19 cases; closing businesses when there were 50 new cases was associated with three times more negative tweets compared to closing with 200 new cases.
  • The announcement of additional public health restrictions was associated with 544 additional tweets but did not affect public opinion.
  • During a provincewide lockdown, there were five times more negative tweets compared to a partial lockdown.

  Chum says monitoring and analyzing Twitter posts is a good way for policy-makers to get a handle on what the general public is saying about COVID restrictions. He estimates that 40 per cent of Canadians are regular Twitter users.

  “It’s very easy for politicians to look to the protests and large gatherings and say, ‘OK, that’s what represents Canadians,’” says Chum. “If you look at larger data sets like all the discussion that goes on in the Twitter community, we can actually get a better understanding of what the public’s overall emotional tone is, and it’s not that negative.”

  Public health practitioners can look to reactions and conversations on Twitter to help them shape and improve their public health messaging, since “when people agree with the restrictions, they’re more likely to follow them, so understanding the public’s reaction to these restrictions is very important,” says Chum.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University [email protected] or 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases