Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $9 billion in financial support for post-secondary students and recent graduates on Wednesday after thousands across the country said gaps in existing COVID-19 emergency measures meant they were slipping through the cracks.
The University of Ottawa Heart Institute is among the 19 hospitals, long-term care and retirement homes across the city that are reporting outbreaks of COVID-19, according to Ottawa Public Health. As of Monday, two patients at the heart institute had tested positive for the virus and one patient had died.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has temporarily expanded the Canada Summer Jobs Program to employ up to 70,000 more people, but some post-secondary students say that the measure doesn’t go far enough and are continuing to call on the federal government to better support them through the COVID-19 pandemic.
As hospitals brace for an expected surge of COVID-19 patients and concerns around a shortage of personal protective equipment grow, University of Ottawa engineers are pumping out plastic face shields for frontline health-care workers at the Richard L’Abbé Makerspace lab on campus.
The faculties of medicine, health sciences, engineering, and science at the University of Ottawa have shipped 252 boxes of donated supplies to local hospitals to help them treat COVID-19 patients. Over 110 small businesses and 70 organizations also pitched in.
Around 65 people will move into the building on King Edward Avenue on Monday after a request was made by the City of Ottawa. The building was not in use when the city made its request, according to the university.
As concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic continue to grow and final exams approach, the University of Ottawa has launched a self-declaration form for students to request academic accommodations.
The executive committee of the University of Ottawa’s faculty of engineering is recommending students be given the option, after receiving their final course mark, of having ‘satisfactory’ or ‘not satisfactory’ appear on their transcript rather than an alphanumeric grade, pending approval from the faculty council.
With only three days left until the Sunday deadline move out, University of Ottawa students living in residence have expressed concerns that the school’s measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has only added more strain to an already stressful situation.
