ut austin covid essay

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write the UT Austin Essays 2023-2024

The University of Texas, Austin is a large public research university with an enrollment of over 51,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. UT Austin is the flagship institution of the University of Texas system, and is the home to some of the best engineering, architecture, and business programs in the nation.

Since UT Austin is a selective school, writing strong essays is essential for making your application stand out. UT Austin’s application involves one long essay and four short essay questions (one of which is optional), with additional writing requirements for students applying to these programs: Art/Art History, Architecture, Nursing, and Social Work.

Read these UT Austin essay examples from real students to inspire your own writing.

UT Austin Essay Prompts

Tell us your story. what unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped who you are today (500-700 words), short answer.

Prompt 1 : Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major? (250-300 words)

Prompt 2 : Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT. (250-300 words)

Prompt 3 : The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, “To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society.” Please share how you believe your experience at UT-Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate. (250-300 words)

Prompt 4 (Optional): Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance. If your response to this question is similar to one of the Common App Personal Essays, feel free to simply copy and paste the important parts of your essay here. (250-300 words)

Art/Art History Applicants

Prompt 1 : In 500 words or less, please tell us about a time when an artwork, artist or art teacher impacted your life. How did this inspire you to pursue an education in the arts?

Architecture Applicants

Prompt 1 : Inherent in the design disciplines the capacity to impact the world around us. What does the opportunity to develop such capacity mean to you and you approach to your college education? Please limit your response to 250-300 words.

Prompt 2 : Please provide and upload three images total that demonstrate your creativity. The three images may all be of one option type, or varied amongst the two following options:

Option 1 – Either an original photograph or photographs from a camera, smart phone/mobile device, OR

Option 2 – images of an original art or design project that you have produced and authored yourself., for all, describe how the three images are representative of how you see creativity as a way to describe, reflect on, or change the world. please limit your response to 50-75 words..

Discuss the factors that have influenced your motivation and deep desire to pursue a career in Nursing. Please include any activities and/or life experiences that are related. (250-300 words).

Social Work

Discuss the reasons you chose Social Work as your first—choice major and how a Social Work degree from UT will prepare you for the future. (450-500 words)

Long Essay—All Applicants

This is Topic A of the ApplyTexas Essays . The long essay is the space to tell your story and let the admissions office know something about you that does not appear on your high school resume or transcript. The long word limit gives you time to develop and reflect on an important experience. It’s not enough to just tell a story of an opportunity or challenge; you need to dive into what aspects of your experience influenced you to be the person you are currently.

This prompt is very open-ended, so it is important to take time before you start writing to think about what subject matter you want to talk about. Make sure all elements in your essay tie together and don’t overwhelm the reader with too much information. Focus on only a few, or even just one, experiences within your essay, and dive into good detail on how your experience has shaped you as a person.

The prompt asks you to describe “unique opportunities or challenges” that you have experienced. While brainstorming ideas for your essay, don’t get too caught up in thinking that you must find something that is an obvious opportunity or challenge; think about hobbies, extracurriculars, or personal experiences that have influenced you to this day.

Here are some examples:

• A chance job opportunity that allowed you to push yourself — Maybe you grew up in a rural area and you spent part of your time in high school tending to cows and goats. You’d wake up early before school to tend to the animals, and through that you learned to be reliable and developed a passion for caring for animals. Or maybe an acquaintance runs a small business and you were given the opportunity to run their social media to promote the business. This opportunity taught you the difficulties of running a small business, and also helped you find a creative outlet through advertising design. Either of those examples, or more unique job opportunities that you may have stumbled upon in high school, requires time and dedication, and teaches responsibility.
• Creative hobbies — You like to design and sew clothing for yourself. While designing your prom dress, you came across an intricate bodice design that you wanted to emulate. Figuring out how the pattern came together was like solving a complex puzzle, and because of all of the challenges you have come across while attempting to translate a 2D idea into real life, you have become better at visualizing how different things around you come together, and it’s a skill you’ve carried through all parts of your life. It’s helped you visualize difficult math concepts, or organize your desk and closet space to optimize your productivity.

Short Answers—All Applicants

For your UT Austin application, you are required to respond to the first three prompts. There is also an additional prompt to let the committee know about any extenuating circumstances that may have affected your high school performance.

Short Answer 1—All Applicants

Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major (250-300 words).

Ah, the common “Why This Major” college application essay. This essay is important to demonstrate to the admissions committee that you are passionate about the area of study you are interested in. Whatever major is your first choice, you need to take time to reflect and think about what drew you to pursue this field of study.

As detailed in CollegeVine’s article about writing the “Why This Major” essay, a couple key topics to cover are how you developed this interest, and your goals in studying this major. 

Show how you’ve looked into research or career opportunities that appeal to you, and the steps you have taken to pursue your interest, whether it be through hobbies, jobs, research opportunities, readings, etc. Do you have personal reasons for choosing this major? Detail those reasons, and explain how either a personal experience, inspirational character, or more have impacted your life and decision to study your major.

• Biology — You have been a passionate bird-watcher for most of your life. Your father would take you around to various parks and teach you how to identify various bird calls, differentiate between males and females within a species, and more. This has developed into an interest in the evolutionary and migratory behavior of birds, and you wish to pursue biology as the stepping stone to further graduate studies specializing in birds.
• Radio-Television-Film — Growing up, you’ve always had a fascination with movies and have become a huge movie buff. You’ve been especially interested in how the creative team creates and rig up the physical special effects and props. In your spare time, you and your friends make your own home films, and you are often the one who researches and creates any special effects and props with your available budget and resources. Though your home productions are not the most well-refined, you have had fun, and you want to pursue Film to get a better understanding of how to professionally create crazy shots and break into the film industry.
• Linguistics — Your family moved around a lot throughout your childhood, and in every new town or city you lived in, you were fascinated by the different slang and accents of the people around you. You’ve lived everywhere — Louisiana, Vancouver, Long Island, South Dakota, Southern California, and more, and you want to further understand how these regional quirks developed and how they affect the culture of an area today.

Short Answer 2—All Applicants

Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community, or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at ut. (250-300 words).

This is the classic Diversity Essay , which allows colleges to get to know you better and how you’ll impact their campus community.

Reflect on the things that make you truly unique. If you choose to go down the talent route, keep in mind that “talent” is a broad term that can apply to anything. It’s not just about whether or not you can juggle; perhaps your talent is your ability to lead vocal warmups before the school musical – you can write about how you’ve learned to build a sense of community using your talent.

And speaking on leadership, leadership isn’t just becoming an officer in a school organization or a captain of an athletic team. Leadership can also be demonstrated by taking charge and caring for your siblings while your parents are busy, organizing your friend group’s yearly Secret Santa, or coaching your neighborhood swim team. Even if something you did isn’t explicitly a “leadership role,” you can demonstrate guidance and management skills in other ways. 

Avoid just listing off all leadership positions you have held. This information is most likely already elsewhere in your application, and doesn’t give the admissions committee a more in-depth view of why you are passionate about the areas you have shown leadership in and what you did to better the group/environment/area around you. Pick 1-3 related experiences, and tie together how you took initiative to shape things around you. The admissions committee wants to make sure they are accepting students with initiative and determination to impact their environment. 

• Family Responsibility — Your parents had to work late hours a lot to earn enough for your family when you were younger. Though you and your siblings have always been responsible, you’ve noticed that it’s been difficult for your younger brother with special needs when your parents were away in the evenings, so you took the time to create different activities for him. You had your brother explore various hobbies that were accessible to you, such as drawing or tree climbing around your neighborhood, to keep him busy, mentally stimulated, and help your parents. This has taught you a lot of responsibility and you would love to continue to work with children who have special needs through some of UT Austin’s organizations like the Student Council for Exceptional Children.
• Friend Group Activities — You have a small group of friends who enjoy spending time with each other, but are terrible at planning larger, more ambitious activities. You decided that you were sick of just doing the same old thing, hanging out in the park or a parent’s basement. You started organizing day trips to the city nearby, Secret Santa gift exchanges, a day kayaking trip, and more to help you and your friends explore different activities. You coordinated everyone’s schedule and made sure to accommodate all your friends’ likes and dislikes, and have become the unofficial “leader” of your friend group. You now hope to take these experiences and work as an orientation advisor to help incoming freshmen find their group as well.
• School/Extracurricular Events – You stepped up to the plate this year to plan the school’s Homecoming dance, and you wanted to make sure your senior dance could be as fun, inclusive, and well-planned as possible. As such, you organized a committee, delegated responsibilities, and implemented strategies to increase attendance, emphasize safety, and organize different activities that appealed to the wider school community. You gained event planning experience and hope to bring that same passion to UT Austin and assist UT Austin’s Events + Entertainment organization with bringing student-focused events to campus.

The common thread between these three examples is that they all write about a personal experience that eventually ties to how you’ll bring your gained knowledge to UT Austin. You won’t just want to name drop organizations that you hope to join at UT Austin, rather you’ll want to explain why—particularly with a personal connection. 

Short Answer 3—All Applicants

The core purpose of the university of texas at austin is, “to transform lives for the benefit of society.” please share how you believe your experience at ut-austin will prepare you to “change the world” after you graduate. (250-300 words).

UT Austin wants its students to work for the betterment of the world. This prompt requires students to reflect on their personal goals and think about their impact on society. Your response should explain how UT Austin will help you reach those goals using the “Why This College?” essay format. 

First, consider the field of study you want to pursue and what sort of impact you want to make. Maybe you want to go into public health to improve the health outcomes of underrepresented communities. Or perhaps you want to study English and Environmental Science to become an environmental lawyer. 

Keep in mind that its impact doesn’t have to be directly related to community service or altruism. For example, computer science majors can change the world by making processes more efficient. Economics majors can become financial advisors and improve the lives of others. 

If you’re not sure how your work can impact others, see if you can find alumni stories on the website of your department. Here’s the Public Health one , for example. These real-life stories can give you some inspiration on your wide range of options after graduation.

Your goals can be both big and small, but they need to be personal. The “what” doesn’t matter if you don’t write about the “why.” 

Finally, be sure to mention specific UT Austin resources that will help you change the world. Using the public health example, that student may mention how UT Austin offers a student internship program that allows students to conduct their own semester-long research projects and how that will prepare them to conduct independent public health research on minority health outcomes in the future.

It’s also important to mention relevant extracurriculars. Continuing that example, the public health student may want to join Texas Public Health, an on-campus organization, to volunteer in the Austin community and get hands-on experience in public health initiatives. 

Short Answer 4—All Applicants (optional)

Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance. if your response to this question is similar to one of the common app personal essays, feel free to simply copy and paste the important parts of your essay here. (250-300 words).

This essay is optional and provides you the opportunity to explain extenuating circumstances that have affected your education during high school. This is not necessarily a space where you would include a creative essay about your passion for math or make a political statement. Rather this is room for you to let the UT Austin admissions committee know about any extenuating circumstances that may have affected your academic performance. 

Although in the near-past, the COVID-19 pandemic has and is still affecting many students across the world in various ways. This could be a situation that you may want to explain to the admissions committees.

Other non-COVID-related experiences may have also impacted you. If there is a circumstance, such as a loss of job, sickness of a close relative, mental health, or more that has affected your school performance, let UT Austin know here so the admissions committee may take it into consideration while reading your application. 

If any of these extenuating circumstances are written in your Common App personal statement, more likely from prompt 1 or prompt 2 , then you can include an excerpt here.

However, do not use this space as a way to excuse poor performances. Be direct, and let the circumstances speak for themselves. Also keep in mind that many students were disrupted by COVID-19 in similar ways, so you should only write about circumstances that went beyond those common experiences. 

There’s no need to take up the full allotted space or even really write a whole essay; just use as much space as needed to explain your situation.

Major-Specific Short Answer Questions

Certain majors at UT Austin require submitting 1-2 additional short responses. These prompts are brief and dive deeper into showing your passion for your intended area of study.

Art/Art History

In 500 words or less, please tell us about a meaningful way in which an artwork, or artist, has changed your life. how has this prompted your ambitions for a life in the arts.

For the art/art history major at UT Austin, the admissions committee wants to see a commitment to the arts in your everyday life. Dive deep and think about what artists inspired you, or what specific art pieces you find yourself going back to. 

Think across various mediums of art. Painters, sculptors, cinematographers, poets, or more can serve as inspiration to you. Maybe a piece of art inspired you to create your own art and got you interested in different painting techniques across different cultures, inspired you to change habits within your life, or start a band. Whatever inspired you, make sure to relate how your inspiration directly impacted you. Don’t get caught up in just describing your favorite artist or work; tie it into your own life experiences and goals.

Architecture

Inherent in the design disciplines the capacity to impact the world around us. what does the opportunity to develop such capacity mean to you and your approach to your college education please limit your response to 250-300 words..

The admissions committee is hoping to get a sense of your goals and reasons for applying to the Architecture program at UT Austin.

While impacting the world sounds like a weighty topic, UT Austin isn’t looking for you to embellish. The admissions committee wants to hear how you would apply an education in architecture to help the world in any capacity, and that goes for anything from your local community to the globe. 

First define your reasons for pursuing architecture. This is important since the prompt asks what the capacity to impact the world means to you , so you need to reflect on how you’ll impact the world and why you want to do it in that way.

Do you want to design houses in low-income neighborhoods since you grew up in low-income housing that wasn’t efficient or livable? Or do you want to design apartments with sustainability in mind since you’re from Hawaii and have seen how construction can disrupt the environment? 

When possible, mention specific UT Austin resources that will help you achieve your goals, as the prompt asks how your goals shape your approach to your college education. For the student who wants to create sustainable architecture, they may mention courses like Modern History of Sustainable Architecture or wanting to be in one of the fastest-growing cities in the US (Austin), offering many opportunities for hands-on experience in sustainable development.

Please provide and upload three images total that demonstrate your creativity. The three images may all be of one option type, or varied amongst the two following options:

This is a short prompt! The admissions committee wants to see through your eyes and get an idea of your vision of the world. Be concise in your statement, and make sure your photos have a common thread, even if it’s not initially obvious. For example, you could submit photos of the skyline at important locations or times to you, or you could submit photos of various objects that inspire you. This is a very open-ended prompt, and you can spin it to really show the admissions committee your unique outlook on life and the environment around you.

This is also a chance to showcase your creativity and artistic skill. While the program doesn’t require you to submit a portfolio, submitting some of your artwork would give you more of an opportunity to stand out, particularly because UT Austin allows you to mix and match the format of your submissions.

Another way to make your response more cohesive and concise is to submit work with an overarching theme, whether that’s various pictures of your neighborhood at sunset, or artwork you made in response to a specific topic. Tying the three submissions together with a bow will give the admissions committee a stronger sense of how you think about the big picture.

While neither of these prompts have a defined word limit, make sure to answer the question thoroughly while also keeping it brief — remember, the admissions committee is reading many applications and you want to keep them engaged! We recommend no more than 500 words.

Discuss the factors that have influenced your desire to pursue a career in Nursing. Please include any activities and/or life experiences that are related (250-300 words)

This question allows you to discuss why you chose Nursing as your first choice program. Although you have already answered why you want to pursue your first choice major in the short answers section of the application, this extra space really allows you to dive deeper into why you decided to pursue nursing as a career and allows you to show off your work towards your goal. You can add additional anecdotes about why you chose nursing that you might not have had space to include in your short answer prompt.

Before beginning this essay, write down the qualities you feel a good nurse would have. Are they compassionate, culturally aware, patient, knowledgeable, etc.?

Then, write down the activities you did that correspond with those qualities. Did you volunteer for your local Red Cross, or organize a fundraiser for your local care facilities? Did you work in a nursing home, or at a daycare to gain experience working with people with varying needs? What academic classes did you take in high school to prepare yourself for a college nursing program? 

Maybe instead, your motivations to pursue a career in nursing are more related to your own life experiences. Is someone close to you in that occupation? Have you previously worked in a healthcare-related role? Or have you had your own medical issue where a nurse meaningfully changed your perspective on medicine?

Be specific, and dive into details on how your activities or life experiences relate to developing an interest in nursing and a nursing career. Chances are, you have already listed your activities out in another section of your application. Using anecdotes about specific instances or events is crucial in offering new information that will keep admissions officers engaged, and teach them about your passion for nursing.

Discuss the reasons you chose Social Work as your first-choice major and how a Social Work degree from UT will prepare you for the future.

Similar to the nursing prompt, the UT Austin admissions committee is looking for additional information that may not have fit into previous essay answers. How do you want to give back to your community by doing social work? What specific area of social work do you want to work in? Do you want to work with mental health, child protection, human rights, or other aspects of social work? For example, if you grew up in the foster care system and you want to help children who grew up in a similar situation to you, elaborate on that.

The second part of this question asks you how specifically an UT Austin degree can help you with your future goals and career. Make sure to show that you have researched the program itself. Name specific research institutes you may want to work in, such as the Addiction Research Institute, and elaborate what issues you want to study. Relate these to the work you want to do in your future.

If you’re unsure of the specific specialization of social work you want to do, narrow it down to 2-3 interests, and talk about how you can explore various subjects through courses or clubs at UT Austin. Show the admissions committee that you have done your research on the school and truly believe that it is the best place for you to achieve your goals. For instance, someone interested in working with seniors might want to join the research team for the project Telehealth treatments for depression with low-income homebound seniors .

Where to Get Your University of Texas at Austin Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your UT Austin essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Essays & Short Answers

• UT Austin Required Essay in the Common App, or
• Topic A in ApplyTexas
• Please keep your essay between 500–700 words (typically two to three paragraphs).

Summer/Fall 2024 and Spring 2024 Essay Topic

Tell us your story. What unique opportunities or challenges have you experienced throughout your high school career that have shaped who you are today?

Submitting Your Essay

You can submit your essays:

• In conjunction with your application.
• Using the Document Upload System in MyStatus.

*Students do not need to submit other Common App essays. We’ll only review what is required,

Short Answers

• Submit the required short answers to prompts in your admission application.
• Answers are limited to no more than 40 lines, or about 250–300 words per prompt, typically the length of one paragraph.

Summer/Fall 2024 Prompts

• Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first-choice major?
• Describe how your experiences, perspectives, talents, and/or your involvement in leadership activities (at your school, job, community or within your family) will help you to make an impact both in and out of the classroom while enrolled at UT.
• The core purpose of The University of Texas at Austin is, “To Transform Lives for the Benefit of Society.” Please share how you believe your experience at UT Austin will prepare you to “Change the World” after you graduate.

Optional Short Answer

• Please share background on events or special circumstances that you feel may have impacted your high school academic performance.

Spring 2024 Prompts

Submitting your short answers.

You can submit your short answers with either your Common App or Apply Texas application. Short answer responses must be completed in order to submit your application.

• Transfer applicants must submit one essay responding to Topic A.
• Applicants to the School of Architecture and Studio Art, Art Education and Art History are required to upload Topic D in addition to Topic A. 

Essay Topics

Topic a (required).

The statement of purpose will provide an opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances that you feel could add value to your application. You may also want to explain unique aspects of your academic background or valued experiences you may have had that relate to your academic discipline. The statement of purpose is not meant to be a listing of accomplishments in high school/college or a record of your participation in school-related activities. Rather, this is your opportunity to address the admission committee directly and to let us know more about you as an individual, in a manner that your transcripts and the other application information cannot convey.

Topic D (School of Architecture majors and Studio Art, Art Education and Art History majors only)

Personal interaction with objects, images and spaces can be so powerful as to change the way one thinks about particular issues or topics. For your intended area of study (architecture, art history, studio art, visual art studies/art education), describe an experience where instruction in that area or your personal interaction with an object, image or space effected this type of change in your thinking. What did you do to act upon your new thinking and what have you done to prepare yourself for further study in this area?

Submitting Your Essay(s)

• University of Texas Libraries
• UT Libraries

COVID-19 Resources

• Dell Medical School Library
• LibKey Nomad - Full Text
• What's New?
• Clinical Practice Guidelines
• Clinical Trials
• Drug Information
• Health and Medical Law
• Point-of-Care Tools
• Test Prep Resources
• Video, Audio, and Images
• Search Tips
• PubMed Guide This link opens in a new window
• Ask the Question
• Acquire the Evidence
• Appraise the Evidence
• Evidence Hierarchy
• EBM Bibliography
• Child Neurology
• Dermatology
• Emergency Medicine
• Family Medicine
• Internal Medicine
• Obstetrics & Gynecology
• Ophthalmology
• Orthopaedic Surgery
• Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
• Mobile Apps
• Citation Managers This link opens in a new window
• Citation Manuals
• General Resources
• Study Types
• Literature Reviews
• Systematic Reviews
• Scoping Reviews
• Rapid Reviews
• Integrative Reviews
• Technical Reports
• Case Reports
• Getting Published
• Selecting a Journal
• Open Access Publishing
• Avoiding Low Quality Open Access
• High Quality Open Access Journals
• Keeping Up with the Literature
• Health Statistics
• Research Funding This link opens in a new window
• Author Metrics
• Article Metrics
• Journal Metrics
• Scholarly Profile Tools
• Health Humanities This link opens in a new window
• Health Equity This link opens in a new window
• UT-Authored Articles
• Resources for DMS COVID-19 Elective

Begin your PubMed Search here

Coronavirus Resources

• Covid-19 Dashboards
• Scholarly Resources
• Research Funding Opportunities
• Background Information
• Consumer Resources
• Government Resources
• Policies, Protocols, Guidelines
• Point of Care
• Maps, Visuals, Data
• Medical Education
• Patient Education
• Back to School
• Health Humanities
• Search Strategies
• Retractions
• Research Data Sets
• Projects in Development
• Health Disparities
• WHO COVID-19 Dashboard
• CDC COVID Data Tracker
• CDC COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review
• Texas COVID-19 Dashboard
• COVID-19 Surveillance, Austin - Travis County, TX
• UT Austin COVID-19 Dashboard

National Institutes of Health / National Library of Medicine / CDC / WHO

• NIH/NLM. LitCovid "LitCovid is a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus. It is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to [a rapidly growing body of] research articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics and geographic locations for improved access."
• NIH. iSearch COVID-19 Portfolio Updated daily, this is the "NIH’s comprehensive, curated source for publications related to COVID-19. This portfolio includes articles from PubMed and pre-prints from arXiv, medRxiv, bioRxiv, and ChemRxiv."
• NIH/NLM. NCBI SARS-CoV-2 Resources "provides a central location from which you can quickly navigate to specialized SARS-CoV-2 content or tools at NCBI, including: Sequence submissions, Literature in PubMed and LitCovid, Trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, NCBI Virus SARS-CoV-2 Data Hub, Sequences in GenBank and SRA, Protein structures, Chemicals and related records from PubChem, Coronavirus BLAST search page."
• NIH/NLM. PubTator Central PubTator Central (PTC) is a Web-based system that uses machine learning techniques to provide automatic annotations of biomedical concepts such as genes, mutations, chemical, species, cell-line, and disease in PubMed abstracts and PMC full-text articles.
• WHO. Global Literature on Coronavirus Disease "The global literature cited in the WHO COVID-19 database is updated daily (Monday through Friday) from searches of bibliographic databases, hand searching, and the addition of other expert-referred scientific articles. This database represents a comprehensive multilingual source of current literature on the topic."
• CDC. MMWR. Novel Coronavirus Reports "Often called “the voice of CDC,” the MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report] series is the agency’s primary vehicle for scientific publication of timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations."
• CDC. Covid-19 Science Update "Every day, many studies are released to help answer critical questions about COVID-19. But given the large number and different types of studies being released, it can be difficult to stay on top of the latest research." "This weekly series provides brief summaries of new COVID-19-related studies on many topics, including epidemiology, clinical treatment and management, laboratory science, and modeling."

Other Databases/Portals to the COVID-19 Scholarly Literature

• Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Systematic and living map on COVID-19 evidence This living and systematic map of research on COVID-19 organizes the literature into various population groups and topic areas: prevalence, etiology; diagnosis; Infection prevention and control; pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions; prognosis; experiences, perceptions, and social, political & economic aspects.
• EPPI. COVID-19: Living Map of the Evidence. "An up-to-date map of the current evidence categorized into broad domains for easy exploration"
• University of Michigan. Covid-19 Best Evidence Front Door Assembled by the staff of the Taubman Health Sciences Library at the University of Michigan, this collection/search engine includes meta-analyses, literature syntheses, and clinical guidelines from highly trusted sources. This content is directly related to care of patients with COVID-19.
• VA Evidence Synthesis Program. COVID-19 Evidence Reviews "Our goal of cataloging COVID-19 evidence reviews is to capture the work of evidence synthesis groups in the US and around the world to maximize our collective contributions to patients, frontline clinicians, researchers, and policymakers during the COVID-19 pandemic and avoid duplicating efforts. This catalog is maintained by staff at the VA Evidence Synthesis Program based in Portland, OR."
• University of Edinburgh, Usher Institute. UNCOVER [Usher Network for COVID-19 Evidence Reviews] This is a regularly updated register of completed COVID-19 evidence reviews from around the world and includes a functional search box. Additionally, the evidence is summarized and critically appraised in the following categories: children & schools, race & ethnicity, transmission & infectivity, housing & neighborhoods, influenza & COVID-19, facemasks, clinical features & comorbidities, and long COVID.

Major Medical Journals

• American Family Physician. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Daily Research Briefs
• Anesthesia & Analgesia. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• BMJ. Coronavirus (covid-19): Latest News and Resources
• Cell Press. Coronavirus Resource Hub
• JAMA Network. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• The Lancet. COVID-19 Resource Centre
• The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics. Drugs for COVID-19.
• Nature. Coronavirus Collection
• NEJM. Coronavirus (Covid-19)
• NEJM. COVID-19: A Collection of NEJM Journal Watch Coverage
• NEJM Catalyst. Covid-19
• Pediatrics. COVID-19 - Pediatric Collection

Medical Publishers

• AccessMedicine COVID-19 Central
• Annual Reviews Article Collection: Coronavirus Research.
• Cambridge University Press. Coronavirus Free Access Collection
• Cochrane Library. Coronavirus (COVID-19): Evidence Relevant to Critical Care
• Cochrane Library. Coronavirus (COVID-19) - Cochrane Resources and News
• Elsevier. Novel Coronavirus Information Center
• F1000Research. Diseases Outbreaks: Coronavirus
• medRxiv. COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 Preprints from medRxiv and bioRxiv
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine. Coronavirus Resources Collection.
• Ovid. Coronavirus Articles Published by Ovid
• Sage. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Research
• SpringerNature. SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
• SSRN. Coronavirus
• Taylor & Francis. COVID-19: Novel Coronavirus Content: Free to Access
• Wiley. Covid-19: Novel Coronavirus Content Free to Access

Miscellaneous Organizations

• American Society for Microbiology. Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources Provides links to news, ASM updates, a COVID-19 toolkit, ASM journal articles, and podcasts
• Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota. COVID-19 Resource Center Presents a bibliography of scholarly articles, links to recent news and other online resources.Also provides background information, epidemiology, labs & diagnostics, supply chain issues, podcasts & webinars, maps & visuals.
• Dimensions. Results from COVID-19 Search Citations to research articles and scholarly books along with linked information resources such as clinical trials, grants, patents, and data sets, policy documents and metrics.

Preprints are research articles that are in their pre-peer-review status.  The purpose of their early access is to get research out as quickly as possible as the peer-review and publication processes can delay timely dissemination of research results.  But, remember that without the peer-review process, one should carefully evaluate these articles for quality and accuracy.

• BioRxiv and MedRxiv. COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints "BioRxiv and MedRxiv are free online archives for unpublished preprints in the life sciences and biosciences. They are operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution.
• HS Talks. SARS-CoV-2 Based in London, Henry Stewart Talks are a provider of specially prepared, animated, online, audio-visual lectures, seminar-style talks and case studies. "Editors and lecturers are leading world experts and practitioners, including Nobel Laureates, drawn from academia, research institutes, commerce, industry, the professions and government."

Lisa Scarborough, Director of Faculty Development in the Office of the Vice President for Research, is currently maintaining a list of COVID-19 research opportunities in the PIVOT database.  Access it here:   https://pivot.proquest.com/curated_opps

Note: You will need to login with your UT EID and password to see Lisa's curated list.  If your initial login attempt results in a blank result set, click on the above link a second time.

• UT Libraries | Find Funding Opportunities A guide to finding funding through federal & state government sources, foundations, and associations. It also contains a link to the Pivot Start Guide.
• UTSouthwestern Medical Center | COVID-19 Funding Opportunities Excellent and comprehensive guide to funding opportunities from government and non-government sources.
• ClinicalKey Access is restricted to Dell Medical School students, staff, and faculty. To access ClinicalKey, view the following instructions: more... less... Updated regularly. A comprehensive collection of medical resources in a variety of specialties designed to support evidence-based clinical care and clinical education. ClinicalKey includes the full text of medical textbooks, medical journals, clinical practice guidelines, drug information and drug class overviews, procedure videos, comprehensive clinical topic summaries, patient education handouts in several languages, clinical calculators, and CME credits.
• ClinicalKey Access Instructions
• Coronaviruses. In: Riedel S et al. Jawetz, Melnick, & Adelberg's Medical Microbiology, 28e. 2019. (AccessMedicine)
• Common Viral Respiratory Infections: Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). In: Papadakis MA, McPhee SJ, Rabow MW. eds. Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2020. (AccessMedicine)
• Coronaviridae: 100,000 Years of Emergence and Reemergence. In. Emerging and Reemerging Viral Pathogens, Vol. 1 Fundamental and Basic Virology Aspects of Human, Animal and Plan Pathogens. 2020. (ScienceDirect)
• Coronaviruses. In Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. (ClinicalKey)
• Human Coronaviruses. In: Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases. 2018. (ScienceDirect)

• What you need to know about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Fact sheet from the CDC for patients and people in the community
• Videos Links to videos from the CDC including: "What is Coronavirus Disease 2019?", "What Older Adults Need to Know", "What's my Risk?", "How to Protect Myself", and much more
• Travel Information about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) for travelers and travel related industries.
• Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19 Recommendation from the CDC for cloth face coverings. Includes sew and no-sew instructions, and guidance on using and keeping clean.
• How to Make Your Own Face Covering [Video]

• Coronavirus Infections Provides basic information and links to additional information about Coronovirus infections including COVID-19
• COVID-19 Testing Information about two types of COVID-19 tests: viral tests and antibody tests
• COVID-19 Vaccines On this page, you can learn about research that is currently being conducted to create a vaccine to prevent COVID-19. You can also learn about volunteer opportunities for vaccine clinical trials.

• CDC. COVIDView This CDC report provides a weekly summary and interpretation of key indicators being adapted to track the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This includes information related to COVID-19 outpatient visits, emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths, as well as laboratory data.

• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Newsroom Read recent responses and actions regarding COVID-19
• Congress.gov. Find current legislation from the US government in response to COVID-19
• EPA. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Key resources from the Environmental Protection Agency on the coronavirus disease.
• FDA. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Information about the Covid-19 vaccinations that have received emergency use authorization and FDA-approved and authorized treatments.
• National Conference of State Legislatures. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources
• National Conference of State Legislatures. State Action on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• SAMHSA. Coronavirus (COVID-19) The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides guidance and resources to assist individuals, providers, communities and states.
• USDA. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Guidance for farmer resources, food assistance, school meals, and other important needs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• US Department of Defense Latest DOD policy guidance, vaccine availability, and travel restrictions status.
• Coronavirus.gov Portal with links to a variety of federal government websites containing information and guidance about Covid-19.

ClinicalTrials.gov

• Results of Search for COVID19
• Federally Funded Studies for COVID-19
• COVID-19 Studies from the WHO Database
• Views of COVID-19 Studies Listed on ClinicalTrials.gov (Beta) Displays two tables showing number of trials, countries, and states for COVID-19 studies and COVID-19 Vaccine and Drug Studies

Other Trials Databases

• Milken Institute. COVID-19 Treatment and Vaccine Tracker The Milken Institute is currently tracking the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 (coronavirus).
• University of Basel. COVID-Evidence Database. Planned, ongoing and completed trials to treat and prevent COVID-19.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• CDC. Information for Healthcare Professionals Guidance for clinical care, infection control, supply of PPE, home care, . . .
• CDC. Healthcare Facilities Guidance for healthcare facilities, long-term care facilities, outpatient hemodialysis facilities
• CDC. Health Departments Guidance for risk assessment and monitoring, pandemic preparedness, . . .
• CDC. Information for Laboratories Guidance for handling clinical specimens, biosafety, diagnostic tools, . . .
• CDC. Schools, Workplaces & Community Locations Guidance for community mitigation, community gatherings, schools, homeless shelters, work places, . . .

NIH (National Institutes of Health)

• NIH. COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

Other Departments of the US Government

• Disaster Information Management Research Center
• US Food & Drug Administration. Surgical Mask and Gown Conservation Strategies

World Health Organization

• WHO. Country & Technical Guidance - Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
• WHO. Clinical Management of Severe Acute REspiratory INfection when Novel Coronavirus (nCoV) Infections is Suspected. "This document is intended for clinicians taking care of hospitalised adult and paediatric patients with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) when a nCoV infection is suspected. . . . Best practices for SARI including IPC and optimized supportive care for severely ill patients are essential."

American Medical Association

• American Medical Association. COVID-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) Resource Center for Physicians Links to information, news, collections, key resources, and a map of the Coronavirus

Association of American Medical Colleges

• AAMC. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Clinical Guidance Repository "COVID-19 treatment and management guidance to help clinicians optimize patient care"
• AAMC. Medical Students and Patients with COVID-19: Education and Safety Considerations

Other Organizations

• AHA, AAP, AARC, ACEP, SCCA, ASA. Interim Guidance for Basic and Advanced Life Support in Children and Neonates with Suspected or Confirmed COVID-19. Pediatrics. [Published online May r, 2020]. 2020. doi:10.1542/peds.2020-1405
• American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Fetus and Newborn, Section on Neonatal Perinatal Medicine, and Committee on Infectious Diseases. Initial Guidance: Management of Infants Born to Mothers of COVID-19. April 2, 2020.
• American Hospital Association. Updates and Resources on Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources to help hospitals and health systems as they navigate the COVID-19 health care challenge.
• ASTM International. ASTM Standards and COVID-19. "ASTM International is providing no-cost public access to important ASTM standards used in the production and testing of personal protective equipment - including face masks, medical gowns, gloves, and hand sanitizers - to support manufacturers, test labs, health care professionals, and the general public as they respond to the global COVID-19 public health emergency."
• Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource Center "CIDRAP is tracking and analyzing the rapidly evolving novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The CIDRAP COVID-19 Resource Center provides a deep well of information for public health experts, business preparedness leaders, government officials, and the public."
• CPT® releases new coronavirus (COVID-19) code & description for testing
• ECRI. COVID-19 Resource Center "ECRI has developed this free resource center to help hospitals, ambulatory care, and aging care facilities protect healthcare workers, residents, and patients."
• Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI). COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Outbreak Preparedness Center "In keeping with its mission of effective, evidence-based healthcare globally, ECRI has developed this COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Outbreak Preparedness Center to help hospitals protect healthcare workers as well as patients."
• Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative. COVID-19 Links and Resources "GEDC is a nation-wide collaborative dedicated to improving the quality of care for older people in Emergency Departments with the goal of reducing harm and improving healthcare outcomes."
• Infectious Diseases Society of America. Guidelines on Infection Prevention in Patients with Suspected or Known COVID-19
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security. COVID-19 Situation reports, analysis, recommendations, toolkits, and fact sheets
• JOVE. Coronavirus Free Access Resource Center JOVE published experimental methods in video format. This collection includes videos for corona specific protocols, general virus protocols, and lab preparation.
• National Academy for State Health Policy. Chart: Each State's Stay-at-Home Orders and Reopening Dates "This chart describes each governor’s stay-at-home order, penalties for noncompliance, and the dates when governors plan to reopen their economies and resume non-essential, medical, surgical, and dental procedures. "
• OpenICPSR. COVID-19 US State Policy Database "Database of state policies on closures, shelter-in-place orders, housing protections, changes to Medicaid and SNAP, physical distancing closures, reopening, and more created by researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health."
• Society of Critical Care Medicine. Emergency Resources: COVID-19 Resources for responding to the coronavirus disease 2019.
• Society of Hospital Medicine. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• University of Washington Medicine. COVID-19 Resource Site Screening and texting algorithms, policy statements, and protocols developed by the University of Washington Medicine System in response to the outbreak in Western Washington
• US Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. COVID-19 Provides guidance to workers and employers for preventing exposures to and infection with COVID-19
• Wolters Kluwer. COVID-19 Resources & Tools Information for care teams, patient resources, etc.

Other Countries' Government  Webpages: Guidance

• UK Government. COVID-19: Guidance for Health Professionals "Information on COVID-19, including guidance on the assessment and management of suspected UK cases."
• 5 Minute Consult. 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
• American College of Physicians. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Information for Internists "These resources are meant to assist internists seeking to prepare and manage their response."
• Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Oxford COVID-19 Evidence Service Evidence synthesis to answer important questions about COVID-19 for clinical practice
• ClinicalKey. Clinical Overview: Coronavirus Provides a thorough clinical overview including synopsis, terminology, diagnosis, etiology, differential diagnosis, treatment, prognosis
• Dynamed. COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus)
• ECRI. Covid-19 Resource Center "Providing free and shareable resources to the healthcare community in response to the COVID-19 pandemic"
• HFSA/ACC/AHA Statement Addresses Concerns Re: Using RAAS Antagonist in COVID-19 "Joint statement from the ACC, American Heart Association and Heart Failure Society of America was posted online on March 17 and addresses using renin angiotensin aldosterone system (RAAS) antagonists in COVID-19."
• International Anesthesia Research Society. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources Curation of the latest peer-reviewed articles to support those addressing illness on the front lines.
• Johns Hopkins ABX Guide. Coronavirus COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) The Johns Hopkins ABX Guides are created by the experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine, are updated monthly and organized to let clinicians easily find information at the point-of-care.
• The Medical Letter: Treatments Considered for COVID-19. "The table . . . lists pertinent evidence on the clinical effectiveness and safety of some drugs and other therapies being considered for COVID-19."
• The Pharmacist's Letter. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resource Hub "TRC Healthcare’s mission is to help clinicians and healthcare professionals make safe, effective and efficient medication and natural therapy decisions." "Use these recommendations, clinical resources, and other guidance to help you navigate the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its implications in your community and practice."
• Red Book Online. 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-10) Infections Provides information from the preeminent resource on pediatric infectious disease from the American Academy of Pediatrics
• TRIP (Turning Research into Practice). Updates on COVID-19 Includes literature at all levels of the evidence pyramid - research synopses, guidelines, primary research, etc.
• University of Edinburgh, UNCOVER (Usher Network for COVID-19 Evidence Reviews). Register of Reviews "A comprehensive global register of completed COVID-19 evidence reviews." These include narrative reviews, protocols, rapid reviews, scoping reviews, systematic reviews, and umbrella reviews.
• UpToDate. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
• Wolters Kluwer. Clinical Effectiveness COVID-19 Resources
• Wolters KLuwer. COVID-19 Tools & Resources for Clinicians. COVID-19 resources for front-line clinicians and medical researchers

Calculators

• MDCalc. Core COVID-19 Calculators
• CDC. COVID-19Surge tool COVID-19Surge is a spreadsheet-based tool that hospital administrators and public health officials can use to estimate the surge in demand for hospital-based services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Case Data - Interactive Maps

• COVID Data Tracker | CDC Maps, charts, and data for case and deaths by state, county, demographics and population factors, etc.
• Global COVID-19 Coronavirus Statistics |IBM & Weather Channel Provides data regarding rate of COVID-19 spread, data for USA by county - total number and number of cases by day, global statistics
• Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases |Johns Hopkins Provides a map of global cases of COVID-19 along with numbers of confirmed cases. Updated regularly.
• Tracking the Coronavirus at U.S. Colleges and Universities. New York Times. The New York Times is tracking coronavirus cases on campuses through a rolling survey.
• Texas Case Counts: COVID-19. Texas Heath and Human Services Case counts at the state and county level.
• COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project | University of Minnesota Reports data for percentage of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and percentage of ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients in each county in the United States.
• UT Austin COVID-19 Dashboard UT Austin Student and Faculty/Staff COVID-19 Cases
• WHO. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard.

Prediction Visuals

• COVID-19 Mortality Projections for US States | University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium "These graphs show both the reported and projected number of COVID-19 deaths per day across the US and for individual states. For each US state, we use local data from mobile-phone GPS traces to quantify the changing impact of social-distancing measures on “flattening the curve.”"
• COVID-19 Projections. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Based out of the University of Washington, the IHME developed and updates forecasts for the impact of COVID-19 on all 50 states and other regions of the world.
• COVID-19 Projection Tools | American Hospital Association Two COVID-19 projection tools provided free by the American Hospital Association: 1. Bed occupancy 2. People per hospital bed by region
• School Risk Dashboard | University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium "We project the expected number of students or staff who will arrive infected in a given week based on recent estimates for COVID-19 prevalence in each US county and the size of a school or pod."
• US COVID Map and Risk Levels | COVID Act Now "Created by a team of data scientists, engineers, and designers in partnership with epidemiologists, public health officials, and political leaders to help understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect their region"

Other Visualizations

• EBSCO. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Resource Center Current epidemiology statistics, visualization of pandemic since onset
• HealthMap. Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) See the global progression of the cases of COVID-19 starting from the beginning of January 2020. Note that the actual number of cases seems to be not as up-to-date as other more reliable resources.
• Information is Beautiful. COVID-19 #Coronavirus Data Pack Uses data from Johns Hopkins University, CDC, WHO, Statista, China CDC, Google News, NYT, and The Guardian are used to create these graphics. Links to the raw data are also provided.
• KFF. State Data and Policy Actions to Address Coronavirus.
• Kinsa Insights. US Health Weather Map The U.S. Health Weather Map is a visualization of seasonal illness linked to fever - specifically influenza-like illness. The aggregate, anonymized data visualized here is a product of Kinsa’s network of Smart Thermometers and accompanying mobile applications, and Kinsa is providing this map and associated charts as a public service.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Covid-19 Data Resource Center "By combining our unique data and analytics together with those of other industry stakeholders, we created the COVID-19 data set and interactive visualization in order to provide insights on at-risk populations and care capacity risks."
• New York Times. Coronavirus Map. The map tracks the spread of the Coronavirus outbreak
• Our World in Data. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) - Statistics and Research Data collected includes deaths, testing, case fatality rates, healthcare capacity
• Statista. COVID-19/Coronavirus: Facts and Figures Covid-19 data at the country level and daily surveys about changes to general lifestyle and main worries/concerns, economic impact, plus a variety of infographics
• Tableau. COVID-19 Data Hub Coronavirus visualizations from the Tableau Community
• unacast. Social Distancing Scoreboard "Interactive Scoreboard, updated daily, to empower organizations to measure and understand the efficacy of social distancing initiatives at the local level"

Data Repositories

• OpenICPSR. COVID-19 Data Repository "The COVID-19 Data Repository is a repository for data examining the social, behavioral, public health, and economic impact of the novel coronavirus global pandemic. This is a free self-publishing option for any researcher who wants to share data related to COVID-19."

News from Medical Organizations

• American Public Health Association. COVID-19 Provides links to fact sheets, news, and guidance.
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Global Health Now.
• Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control Provides news and guidance on quality, patient safety, infection control and accreditation issues impacting healthcare providers and other quality and safety professionals.
• EBSCO. COVID-19 Updates & Information News, government updates, and maps
• Epistemonikos Foundation. COVID-19 Blog Evidence-based answers for the most frequent question regarding the emergency."
• MDedge. Coronavirus Updates MDedge is an independent news publication for internal medicine specialists featuring news and commentary about clinical developments, health care policy and regulations
• WHO. Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) Situation Reports "The WHO is issuing frequent situation reports with updates on cases, deaths, and countries, territories, or areas with reported confirmed 2019-nCoV cases."
• Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Coronavirus A Mary Ann Liebert publication that is reporting daily on coronavirus research development.
• New York Times. The Coronavirus Outbreak "free access to the most important news and useful guidance on the coronavirus outbreak to help readers understand the pandemic"
• Washington Post. Coronavirus Updates "The Washington Post is providing our daily live updates, comprehensive guide to the pandemic and our Coronavirus Updates newsletter for free"
• NPR. The Coronavirus Crisis "Everything you need to know about the global outbreak"
• BBC News. Coronavirus Pandemic
• STAT. Infectious Disease section. Produced by Boston Globe Media, STAT is a media company focused on finding and telling compelling stories about health, medicine, and scientific discovery.
• The New Humanitarian. Infectious Diseases Founded by the UN but now an independent newspaper, "the New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. We report from the heart of conflicts and disasters to inform prevention and response."

Academic News Sources

• MIT Technology Review. Coronavirus Reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak provided for free
• AAMC. MedEdPORTAL: Virtual Learning Resources during COVID-19 "This collection features peer-reviewed teaching resources that can be used for distance learning, including self-directed modules and learning activities that could be converted to virtual interactions."
• Academic Medicine. COVID-19 and Medical Education "This collection features articles and thought pieces on the novel coronavirus, its impact on medical education, and medical education’s response to it."
• AccessMedicine. COVID-19 Central "The AccessMedicine channel for the latest information on the COVID-19 global pandemic."
• AMA. COVID-19 Resources for Medical Educators
• AMA. Medical Education COVID-19 Resource Guide
• FacDevCanada (the national Faculty Development Network of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada). PIVOT MedEd. "We are partners, working together as a community of educators to create and curate resources to help each other pivot our curriculum for medical learners during a pandemic, such as the one we're facing right now with COVID-19."
• McGraw Hill. Using the Access Sites for Distance Learning: Distance Learning Toolkit "Did you know that our Access platforms can support teaching strategies for distance learning? Experience a variety of content to fit different learning styles via the Access platforms. No matter where your students are, Access platforms provide the opportunity for integrated implementation of distance learning."
• Medical Education (Journal). Medical Education Adaptations. "Adaptations articles offer an opportunity to learn from the insights gained by education scholars around the globe through their experience innovating quickly to meet unexpected demands."
• Osmosis. COVID-19: Your Questions, Answered

Select Articles

• Rose S. Medical Student Education in the Time of COVID-19. JAMA. March 31, 2020

As school systems start to decide/plan about reopening and parents decide between sending their children to school or keeping them at home, medical organizations, cities, and researchers are studying the evidence and developing steps to move forward. Helpful resources include the scholarly literature, school system planning documents, and guidelines/recommendations from medical experts.

Additionally, there are some resources listed below about the reopening of institutions of higher education.

School Reopening Plans

• Austin Independent School District. Reopening Plan
• Austin Public Health. Guidance on Reopening for Austin-Travis County Schools
• Johns Hopkins University. Analysis of School Reopening Plans. Links to individual states reopening plans and national reopening guidance
• Education Week. Tracking School Reopening Plans for the Fall "Education Week is collecting reopening plans from a sample of school districts around the country. This table provides information on how districts plan to reopen. It is a working list gleaned from district websites, local media reports, and Education Week reporting."
• NEA School and Campus COVID-19 Reporting Site "NEA [National Education Association] is using this site to provide educators and community members with a way to share information about COVID-19 cases and health & safety concerns in education institutions."
• Li A, Harries M, Ross LF. Reopening K-12 Schools in the Era of COVID-19: Review of State-level Guidance Addressing Equity Concerns [published online ahead of print, 2020 Aug 28]. J Pediatr. 2020;S0022-3476(20)31105-7. doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2020.08.069 References include links to each state's school reopening plan/framework containing guidance for addressing equity concerns.
• American Academy of Pediatrics. COVID-19 Planning Considerations for School Re-entry
• CDC. Coronavirus Disease 2019: Schools and Childcare Programs: Plan, Prepare, and Respond. For schools: -Preparing fro a Safe Return to School -Operating Schools During COVID-19 For parents: -Deciding How to Go Back to School -Checklists for Going Back to School
• Johns Hopkins University. How K-12 Schools Should Prepare for Reopening During the 2020-21 Academic Year: An Equity Checklist "This K-12 School Reopening Checklist is intended to serve as a guide to help schools develop comprehensive plans at each stage of the reopening process. The Checklist incorporates an equity lens, to specifically consider the needs of students of poverty and students of color. There are other students who are disproportionately burdened by school closures, including students with special education needs, and students with physical, social, or emotional disabilities. Although we focus in particular on students of poverty and students of color, much of this information may also be relevant to other students disproportionately burdened by school closures for other reasons."
• Learning Policy Institute. Reopening Schools in the Context of COVID-19: Health and Safety Guidelines from other Countries. May 15, 2020. Updated July 13, 2020. "As the United States considers reopening schools after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers and administrators need to consider how to reopen in a way that keeps students and staff safe. This brief provides insight into health and safety guidelines and social distancing strategies used in other countries that have successfully reopened their schools in the context of COVID-19. Examples are intended to support school policymakers and administrators in the United States as they plan for reopening."
• National Academies Press. Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prioritizing Health, Equity, and Communities.

Scholarly Literature

• MGH. COVID-19 School and Community Resource Library: Resources for Clinicians Advising Schools and Community Groups on Strategies to Prevent and Manage COVID-19. "The COVID-19 School and Community Resource Library is a volunteer effort by a group of Massachusetts physicians, including pediatricians, infectious disease physicians, and school district physicians from multiple institutions across the state. Our objective is to offer a compiled source of published and publicly available data for clinicians who are advising K-12 schools and community organizations regarding best practices to prevent and manage COVID-19 infection as they plan their re-opening efforts this year."
• Risks of COVID-19 Introductions as Schools Reopen | University of Texas at Austin "This report provides a simple calculation forestimating the rate at which COVID-19 may appear on school campuses depending on the background prevalence of the virus in the surrounding community."
• PubMed Collection of Articles. School Reopening

Higher Education

• The College Crisis Initiative @ Davidson College. C2i Dashboard. This dashboard includes a map of approximately 3000 colleges, community colleges, and universities with links to their Fall 2020 plans.
• PubMed Collection of Articles. Reopening of Institutions of Higher Education
• #coronavirussyllabus: a crowdsourced cross-disciplinary resources. A collection of shared recommendations from scholars of books, journal articles, literature, music, visual art, etc. that helps put the pandemic in context.
• Northeastern University, Department of English. Humanities Coronavirus (COVID-19) Syllabus This syllabus helps us "think and teach about contagion, global health, and community in a time of social distancing and fear." This syllabus focuses on "literary, historical, philosophical/religious, and cultural aspects of [the] current health crisis and its history."
• Social Science Research Council. Covid-19 and the Social Sciences "Starting with SSRC president Alondra Nelson’s reflections on “Society after Pandemic,” this series of essays explores the human, social, political, and ethical dimensions of Covid-19. These pieces call attention to how social research can shed light on the short- and long-term effects of the pandemic and what can be done to improve responses, both now and in the future."
• Synapsis. Covid-19 Special Issue Synapsis is a health humanities journal. Its mission is "to develop conversations among diverse people thinking about medical and humanistic ways of knowing.. . . we see ourselves as a “Department Without Walls” that connects scholars and thinkers from different spheres."
• University of Texas at Austin, Humanities Institute. Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus The Humanities Institute initiated an effort during this pandemic to "share poetry that speaks to shared, but also individual, experiences in the time of coronavirus." Join the mailing list to receive regular HI emails with this poetry, or look at the HI's main blog Thinking in Community to read these poems.
• University of Texas at Austin. This is Democracy [Podcast series] "The future of democracy is uncertain, but we are committed to its urgent renewal today. This podcast will draw on historical knowledge to inspire a contemporary democratic renaissance." The recent episodes of this podcast series is focused on the Coronavirus crisis.
• University of Toronto. COVID-19 Ethics Resource Hub Developed by medical students at University of Toronto, this resource hub contains links to sources about resources allocation, health equity, research ethics, vaccine development, moral distress of health care providers, etc.

• PubMed. Search Strategy. Covid-19 Literature ((wuhan[All Fields] AND ("coronavirus"[MeSH Terms] OR "coronavirus"[All Fields])) AND 2019/12[PDAT] : 2030[PDAT]) OR 2019-nCoV[All Fields] OR 2019nCoV[All Fields] OR COVID-19[All Fields] OR SARS-CoV-2[All Fields]
• NIH/NLM. LitCovid Search Strategy. "coronavirus"[All Fields] OR "ncov"[All Fields] OR "cov"[All Fields] OR "2019-nCoV"[All Fields] OR "COVID-19"[All Fields] OR "SARS-CoV-2"[All Fields]
• Searching PubMed to retrieve publications on the COVID-19 pandemic: comparative analysis of search strings | Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2020. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of different searches for COVID-19 records in PubMed and to assess the complexity of searches required. See Table 1 for detailed search strategies.

Retractions  happen when there is a question as to the validity of a paper.  This can be the result of author misconduct such as plagiarism, copyright infringement, or fabrication; a major scientific error in the study such as a miscalculation or experimental error; or a lack of transparency.

Peer-review processes are very important in helping to catch articles suffering from misconduct or errors. If the article is deemed still publishable, peer-reviewers will require revisions to the article to fix the errors. But some articles may slip through, and later, after being discovered to contain error or misconduct, the article will be retracted. 

Two recent papers with Covid-19 data have been retracted because of the lack of transparency from the data source. The two papers are:

Hydroxycholoroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: A multinational registry analysis.   Lancet.  May 22, 2020. Retraction letter

Cardiovascular disease, drug therapy, and mortality in Covid-19 .  NEJM,  May 1, 2020. Retraction Letter

News Articles:

Offord C. Lancet, NEJM retract Surgisphere studies on COVID-19 patients . The Scientist.  June 4, 2020 - News story regarding these two retractions.

Humer C, Taylor M. Retracted COVID-19 studies expose holes in vetting of data firms .  Reuters Health News.  June 9, 2020 - News article about the importance of checking data sources.

Vuong. Q-H. Reform retractions to make them more transparent . Nature.  June 8, 2020; 582:149.

Retraction website:

• Center for Scientific Integrity. Retraction Watch "The mission of the Center for Scientific Integrity, the parent organization of Retraction Watch, is to promote transparency and integrity in science and scientific publishing, and to disseminate best practices and increase efficiency in science." Retraction Watch is a database of retractions of all types of scientific articles.
• Retraction Watch. Retracted Coronavirus (COVID-19) Papers

Search for retractions in databases:

The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.

• Semantic Scholar. COVID-19 Open Research Dataset "a free resource of over 45,000 scholarly articles, including over 33,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses for use by the global research community." Download the full dataset or use the linked CORD-19 Explorer which is a full-text search engine.
• PubTator Central. COVID19 Article Collection from LitCovid Each article is automatically annotated with six different entity types: Gene, Disease, Chemical, Mutation, Species, CellLine
• COVID-19 Portal. A project of graduate students from the UT Austin School of Information "COVID-19 Portal is a dense trove of coronavirus research trends. Updated regularly, this website is an atlas to help researchers and people who are interested in cutting-edge research on COVID-19 to find influential researchers, papers, and institutions."
• Covid Black "COVID Black works at the intersection of health data, information, the humanities, race and social justice. We redefine statistics and information into living data and stories about Black Health. We are data griots. We are Black data storytellers. And we are redefining the future of Black health by marrying ancestry with data analytics & technology."

CDC Twitter Feed

• Last Updated: Mar 7, 2024 6:43 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/medicine

• UT Strategic Plan
• Search Search
• Messages & Speeches : 2021 Messages & Speeches

Factors in UT Austin’s Approach to COVID-19

September 3, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

As the semester gets underway, we are mindful as campus leaders that all of us are experiencing a difficult start of the semester, made tougher by the case numbers in our surrounding community. We hear and feel these concerns ourselves, and we deeply appreciate the thought and concern members of our community are putting toward the start of a successful academic year.

We continue to hear questions from our colleagues about our university’s approach to our fall semester operations and our goal of safely providing in-person experiences for students in the classroom. While we share the objectives of a healthy and safe campus, we know that members of our community don’t always share the same points of view or the same information. To that end, we wanted to take a moment to walk through many of the facts and data that we’ve been considering when making decisions about the classroom experience – both to help others know more about what we’ve learned, and to help others know what kinds of information we expect to continue to consider in the weeks and months to come.

This is not exhaustive – it is tough to summarize everything we learn or consider across multiple committee meetings each week, plus many other conversations with health experts. But, it is our hope that this will provide some additional context and information.

Vaccines  and  masks  are freely available, valuable tools to mitigate risks. The state has not given public universities the authority to mandate them, but we remain optimistic that usage of both of these tools can exceed 90% – especially mask usage at times like these, when disease prevalence is high.

Vaccines are very  strongly associated with positive health outcomes . Put another way, there is overwhelming evidence that those who face the most severe risk from COVID-19 today are unvaccinated. We continue to hear how this is borne out in the hospitalization data, ICU usage, and mortality data.

To support vaccination, the university has added  vaccination locations  and rolled out a  vaccine incentive program  offering prizes of up to $10,000 for students, and many other prizes for faculty and staff members. We encourage all faculty and staff to share information about these incentives with their students.

Those who face serious health risks from COVID-19 in spite of being vaccinated – for example, people with existing health conditions – have the ability to  seek accommodations  through our processes, mitigating their risks.

We’ve seen good evidence of our students taking these issues seriously. For example, nearly 40,000 students uploaded coronavirus test results before the start of the semester. For students living in our campus residences, about 50 tested positive before coming to campus and delayed their move-in date. Among students who arrived without results and were tested here, we observed zero positives.

We continue to carefully monitor the  campus positivity rate , which is fluctuating between 0.5% and 1% — similar to last year and much lower than the surrounding community.

There are indications that the Austin community may have peaked for caseloads, ICU admissions, and ventilator use, based on the latest 7-day moving averages . It’s too early to say, but this would be a favorable trend if it holds.

We have continued to invest in infrastructure, such as our  PCT testing , which reached a record number of students at the start of the semester.

With the increased demand for testing, we have engaged with a third-party provider to add more capacity, and we are working with them to make it easier to sign up for these additional slots and to communicate about them.

Another way we are looking to add testing capacity is to make convenient at-home tests widely available to members of our community. We expect to have more details on this soon.

Anecdotally, many students who did not have access to FDA- or WHO-authorized vaccines are taking advantage of this access now through our vaccine clinics at the Dell Medical School and the Student Services Building.

Finally, to continue the flow of information, starting next week the COVID-19 Executive Committee will begin sending faculty and staff members a weekly update laying out vital data and information the committee is reviewing, with information on strategy considerations plus the latest updates to policies and processes.

As we continue to face the challenges of this semester together, we are grateful for the collective efforts of our faculty and staff. Behind every classroom experience this fall, there are hard-working people facing difficult personal situations yet still rising to this challenging occasion. Thank you for your efforts to make this a successful academic year.

Jay Hartzell President

Sharon L. Wood Executive Vice President and Provost

Darrell Bazzell Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

110 Inner Campus Drive Stop G3400 Austin, TX 78712-3400 512-471-1232 (Phone) 512-471-8102 (Fax) [email protected]

• WEBSITE FEEDBACK

President on Twitter

• Emergency Information
• Site Policy
• Web Accessibility Policy
• Web Privacy Policy

UT Austin Reinstates Standardized Test Scores in Admissions

AUSTIN, Texas — After four years of test-optional admissions for undergraduate applications, The University of Texas at Austin will return to requiring standardized testing scores, beginning with applications for the Fall 2025 semester. The University suspended the standardized score requirement in Spring 2020 due to limited testing availability during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our goals are to attract the best and brightest students and to make sure every student is successful once they are here. Standardized scores combined with high school GPA support this goal by improving early identification of students who demonstrated the greatest academic achievement, the most potential, and those who can most benefit from support through our student success programs,” said President Jay Hartzell. “Our experience during the test-optional period reinforced that standardized testing is a valuable tool for deciding who is admitted and making sure those students are placed in majors that are the best fit. Also, with an abundance of high school GPAs surrounding 4.0, especially among our auto-admits, an SAT or ACT score is a proven differentiator that is in each student’s and the University’s best interest.”

Last year, the University experienced an all-time high number of applicants — approximately 73,000. It is estimated that about 90% or more of these applicants took a standardized exam, according to a range of data provided by the College Board, which administers the SAT. Analysis of the University’s own data further revealed that on average, students who submitted standardized scores performed significantly better on those exams and in their first semester of college, relative to those who did not take the test or chose not to have their scores considered as part of a holistic review. Among the findings:

• 42% of the nearly 73,000 freshman applications for Fall 2024 asked to have their standardized scores considered in a holistic review (to “opt in”), while 49% of students applying under the state’s auto-admit rule (in the top 6% of their high school class) made that request.
• Those who opted in had a median SAT score of 1420, compared with a median of 1160 among those who did not.
• The higher standardized scores translated on average to better collegiate academic performance. Of 9,217 first-year students enrolled in 2023, those who opted in had an estimated average GPA of 0.86 grade points higher during their first fall semester, controlling for a wide range of factors, including high school class rank and GPA. Those same students were estimated to be 55% less likely to have a first semester college GPA of less than 2.0, all else equal.

The University has also demonstrated that knowledge of standardized test scores contributes to higher graduation rates. The ability to predict student success using standardized test scores and other factors spurred a major student success initiative in 2012, strategically directing assistance and resources to students with the greatest academic needs. In part due to these efforts, during the following decade, UT’s four-year graduation rate climbed to a record 74.5% in Fall 2023, up from 52% in 2013. The student success program was recognized in its early stages in New York Times Magazine.

The University will continue to conduct a holistic review and will consider standardized test scores and other performance metrics in light of each applicant’s background, including the strength and rigor of their high school. Standardized test scores will not change the admissions decision for automatic admits, of course, but will be used to match applicants to their choice of majors and to indicate who might benefit most from the University’s student success programs.

In addition to reinstating standardized scores, the University is making further modifications to the application process to strengthen holistic review and craft a stronger, more successful class. These modifications will also improve the application experience for prospective students.

• Introduction of a new Early Action program. This optional deadline will require application submission by Oct. 15, with a guaranteed decision communicated to applicants by Jan. 15. The regular deadline for applications will remain Dec. 1, with a guaranteed decision communicated by Feb. 15.
• Modification of the required essay. This will provide greater flexibility in topic choice and enable students to leverage responses used on other applications, while expanding opportunity for a more personalized response.
• Reduction in the number of short answer responses . This reduction from three responses to two will maintain the currently used major-related question, while creating a new prompt that allows students to highlight a specific activity of their choice.
• Introduction of a waitlist. Applies to students who are not automatically admitted. Most students will be notified as early as March 1 if they are admitted from the waitlist.
• Narrowed scope for letters of recommendation. Applicants submitting letters of recommendation will be strongly encouraged to provide those letters from sources outside of their high school. This reduces the burden of this work on high school teachers and counselors and allows University staff to better leverage other materials.

The University will begin requiring standardized test scores and implement other related changes during the Aug. 1–Dec. 1, 2024, application period.

Explore Latest Articles

Apr 01, 2024

Move More, Sleep Better, UT Study Finds

Mar 31, 2024

Longhorn Pep Band ‘Brings the Energy’

Mar 29, 2024

UT, Austin Parks and Recreation Partner for Eclipse Viewing Opportunities

• Current Issue
• Past Issues

How COVID-19 Helped Put UT Therapeutics on the World Map

In early 2020, the world’s spotlight shined on the university of texas at austin. researchers at ut austin became the first to decode and map the structure of the spike protein of the novel coronavirus, the part that allows sars-cov-2 to enter human cells. this breakthrough discovery, which came just weeks after the coronavirus genome was published online, went on to play an important role in several covid-19 vaccines..

This is a 3D atomic scale map, or molecular structure, of the 2019-nCoV spike protein. The protein takes on two different shapes, called conformations—one before it infects a host cell, and another during infection. This structure represents the protein before it infects a cell, called the prefusion conformation.

What starts here changes the world, indeed.

It took just 66 days from the time the genome was published until the first vaccine trial began. Just 270 days after that, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which has ties to UT Austin, was approved for emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Prior to this, the fastest a vaccine had gone from viral sampling to approval was four years, for mumps in the 1960s.

This blazingly fast effort, a galvanization of the scientific community rarely seen in modern times, benefitted from more than a decade of groundwork laid by engineers and scientists. Jason McLellan, professor of molecular biosciences in the College of Natural Sciences, started down this path searching for a vaccine to combat a respiratory virus called RSV and then applied what he learned to the first highly pathogenic coronaviruses that appeared, MERS and SARS-CoV.

These viruses are all made of genetic material coated in proteins. One of these, the spike protein, is essential for the virus to infect a cell. In the process of infection it changes shape. If the immune system encounters spike in the first shape, it makes potent antibodies that prevent infection, but not if the protein has taken on the second shape. McLellan and his colleagues mapped the structure of the RSV spike and figured out a way to freeze it in its first shape, leading to a new type of vaccine. Then they did it again for the MERS spike.

Jason S. McLellan, associate professor of molecular biosciences, left, and graduate student Daniel Wrapp, right, work in the McLellan Lab.

“As soon as we knew this was a coronavirus, we felt we had to jump at it to get this structure,” McLellan said last year . “We knew exactly what mutations to put into this, because we’ve already shown these mutations work for a bunch of other coronaviruses.”

This breakthrough focused global attention on UT Austin’s therapeutics capabilities. However, this is a burgeoning area of strength that UT researchers have been building for many years.

“The business model for therapeutics is problematic because it has an expiration date on it,” said Jennifer Maynard, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering and member of the vaccine research team. “If we make a great vaccine, it eradicates the disease and then there is no longer a need for it.”

Jennifer Maynard in her lab.

Maynard hopes that the speed of COVID vaccine approval will become a broader trend and that the field will move away from a model where it can take 10 to 15 years to get regulators to sign off on a therapeutic.

“Hopefully this will change the way we approach infectious diseases,” Maynard said. “Because this is really important; we still have a lot of other emerging diseases that are problematic around the world. We have malaria, tuberculosis; other infections that are becoming resistant to antibiotics.”

Engineering Cures

The field of therapeutics/biologics includes several key treatments for patients: vaccines, antibodies, enzymes and peptides. UT experts in these areas have filed more than 100 U.S. patents in the last 10 years alone. Protein therapeutics spinoff companies from UT Austin have raised more than $750 million in the last five years to fund the extensive studies and clinical trials required for drug approval by the FDA.

This work has yielded multiple drug candidates that are being evaluated or are about to be evaluated in clinical trials and one that has been approved by the FDA. In 2016, the FDA approved a drug engineered by Maynard and George Georgiou, a professor in the McKetta Department and in the College of Natural Sciences’ Department of Molecular Biosciences who is leading the new Institute for Human Immunology and Protein Therapeutics , for the treatment and inhalation of anthrax.

The researchers, whose work began more than a decade ago, engineered high-affinity, “sticky” antibody fragments that bind to the anthrax toxin, blocking its activity. They eventually licensed the technology to New Jersey-based company Elusys for further development.

Georgiou and Everett Stone, a research associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences, invented three protein-based drugs for the treatment of debilitating genetic diseases that are now being evaluated in patients. In separate efforts, they have pioneered the development of therapeutic enzymes that serve to activate the immune system to fight cancer.

“At UT Austin we have a rather unique culture of extensive collaborations between engineers and basic scientists that take a very holistic view of protein therapeutics development,” Georgiou said. “We do not just come up with new concepts for therapeutics, as is the case in many other institutions, but we work hard to reduce them to practice and engineer the actual molecules that will be delivered to patients and also develop methods for their efficient production.”

Maynard also developed a therapeutic treatment for pertussis (whooping cough). And she received the inaugural UT Austin “Emerging Inventor of the Year” award in 2015 for her translational research. Stone also received this award in 2017.

These engineers and scientists are important players in the contribution to therapeutics at UT Austin, an effort that spans across disciplines. And that’s not the only aspect of treatments that Cockrell School researchers are studying closely.

Brian Davies

Infectious Disease, Microbiology

George Georgiou

Antibody and Enzyme Therapeutics, Molecular Analysis of Human Antibody Immunity

Gregory Ippolito

Antibody Repertoires, B-cell Immunology

Jennifer Maynard

Vaccines, T cells and Biologics

Jason S. McLellan

Structural Biology, Vaccine Design

Nicholas Peppas

Drug Delivery and Biomaterials

Everett Stone

Enzyme Therapeutics, Cancer Immunology

Getting Treatments Into the Body

Several of the COVID vaccines use mRNA – short for messenger RNA – to teach cells how to make copies of the spike protein that triggers an immune response in the body. That prepares the immune system to fight against the real thing.

There are very few RNA-based treatments that are authorized for use. But, they have tremendous potential, and how they are delivered into the body is a major area of interest for scientists and engineers around the globe, including Nicholas Peppas, a pioneering researcher in the field of drug delivery.

Peppas’ research combines modern molecular and cellular biology techniques with materials engineering to create next-generation solutions. His expertise includes biomaterials and bionanotechnology, and his work in the field of drug delivery has benefited patients around the world.

Nicholas Peppas and students in his lab.

Peppas is known for creating novel systems for insulin delivery to treat Type 1 diabetic patients. He and his fellow researchers have made breakthroughs in the delivery of treatments for a number of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s Disease, inflammatory bowel disease and more.

A significant part of his work, especially in recent years, has focused on creating a delivery system for therapeutics that use synthetic nucleic acids to target and shut down specific, harmful genes and prevent viruses from spreading. These types of treatments, based on what are called siRNA, are exciting because they can be fine-tuned to hinder many different kinds of genes in the body by targeting the mRNA of a virus, which tell cells what to do.

The siRNA work builds on several  previous papers  that have come out of Peppas’ lab focused on developing  hydrogels  and nanoparticles for drug delivery.

A big chunk of Peppas’ work focuses on methods for oral delivery of treatments. However, different patients prefer different methods of treatment; for example; some people can’t swallow pills. So, it’s important for the field to recognize that and create diverse delivery vehicles.

“Some people hate pills and love injections instead, and that tells you the patient factor is an extremely important factor,” said Peppas, who is a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering and also has appointments in the College of Pharmacy and Dell Medical School.

One of the main problems in the field of drug delivery is finding a way to not only protect a treatment as it is being injected but also as it is traveling to its target within the body. These dual demands require versatility in the delivery vehicle.

Adrianne Rosales, assistant professor of chemical engineering, is looking at materials that can morph and change their properties to handle these requirements. And the materials should be able to sense changing conditions in the body.

Stem cells have incredible potential for a wide variety of treatments, include bone regeneration and blood vessel growth. They are primarily delivered today in an aqueous solution, but that requires so many stem cells because they aren’t well protected along the way. Many of them never make it to their target in the body.

Rosales is investigating gels as a delivery vehicle that can both help them get into the body and serve as a scaffolding to protect them from the immune system’s natural defenses.

“The ability to dynamically switch properties of the delivery vehicles is critical,” Rosales said. “During injection you want one set of properties, but afterward, you might want another set of totally different properties.”

Up Next: Low-cost and Universal Coronavirus Vaccines, and More

With several COVID-19 vaccines using UT Austin research receiving complete or emergency use approvals, the researchers are looking at the next step. Earlier this year, human trials began in several countries for a promising vaccine candidate that can be easily manufactured and stored in parts of the world that today rely on importing vaccines.

The vaccine, NDV-HXP-S, can be stored in a refrigerator and is made in chicken eggs, a method also used for flu vaccine manufacturing. These factors mean that affordable manufacturing capacity already exists in each of the countries involved with trials.

This vaccine uses a newer version of the spike protein created by UT Austin researchers, known as HexaPro, than the one present in the Moderna, Pfizer and other early COVID vaccines. HexaPro plays an important role in another major push at UT Austin: developing a catchall coronavirus vaccine that could treat everything from COVID-19 to MERS and SARS.

Researchers are developing a catchall coronavirus vaccine.

The key to creating a vaccine that can defeat all coronaviruses is to find antibodies that will bond with different types of spike proteins.

“Spike is the first step in infection, so if we can block this first step we can block all the downstream effects of infection,” Maynard said.

Vaccine efforts, as well as other COVID treatments, involve wide-ranging collaborations between schools across UT Austin, as well as many outside partners. Beyond vaccines, another major project of interest is an effort that includes several faculty from the College of Pharmacy focused on delivery of COVID therapeutic antibodies by inhalation.

It’ll be interesting to see if the rapid mobilization of COVID vaccinations will have any long-term impact in the field. Will funding became more plentiful? Will it be easier to recruit faculty and students into vaccine development? Will regulatory agencies find a way to speed up approval timelines while continuing to ensure treatments are safe?

Rosales is somewhat new to the field, but she has noticed increased excitement among students lately. The speed with which the COVID vaccine came together seems to be motivating people who like the idea of seeing their research make a difference.

“Everyone was floored by how quickly the vaccines came out,” she said. “That is very attractive to students, seeing the immediate impact their research can have, and therapeutics is an area where I’ve definitely seen a rise in student interest as a result.”

And that increased interest is key, says Maynard. Getting more students and more faculty involved means that the team is more resilient in the case of retirements and changes within the research groups.

“We want to build it so that it becomes an enduring area of strength,” Maynard said, “that when you say ‘I want to do protein therapeutics’ you think about UT.”

by Nat Levy

|    back to all stories

Privacy Preference Center

Privacy preferences.

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Getty Images

Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

10 Ways to Discover College Essay Ideas

Tags: students , colleges , college admissions , college applications , college search , Coronavirus

2024 Best Colleges

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

College Admissions: Get a Step Ahead!

Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy .

Ask an Alum: Making the Most Out of College

You May Also Like

How to decide if an mba is worth it.

Sarah Wood March 27, 2024

What to Wear to a Graduation

LaMont Jones, Jr. March 27, 2024

FAFSA Delays Alarm Families, Colleges

Sarah Wood March 25, 2024

Help Your Teen With the College Decision

Anayat Durrani March 25, 2024

Toward Semiconductor Gender Equity

Alexis McKittrick March 22, 2024

March Madness in the Classroom

Cole Claybourn March 21, 2024

20 Lower-Cost Online Private Colleges

Sarah Wood March 21, 2024

How to Choose a Microcredential

Sarah Wood March 20, 2024

Basic Components of an Online Course

Cole Claybourn March 19, 2024

Can You Double Minor in College?

Sarah Wood March 15, 2024

• All Our Stories
• Agriculture & Animals
• Film & TV
• Food & Drink
• Heel To Toe
• Stories From Texas
• Texan Translation
• Typewriter Rodeo
• Weekend Trip Tips
• Where There’s Smoke
• Border & Immigration
• Business & Economy
• Crime & Justice
• Disability in Texas
• Energy & Environment
• Child Welfare
• PolitiFact Texas
• Week in Texas Politics
• Health & Science
• Military and Veterans’ Affairs
• Texas Newsroom
• Race & Identity
• Tech & Innovation
• Transportation
• Texas Standard
• Stories from Texas
• Show Archives
• Whole Shows
• How to Listen

UT Austin researchers make headway toward universal coronavirus treatments

Share this story with a friend:.

Alyssa Olvera / KUT

Annalee Nguyen and her colleagues at the Maynard Lab at UT Austin's Department of Chemical Engineering hope their research could bring about vaccines or treatments that work for most coronaviruses.

Researchers at UT Austin played a leading role in the development of COVID vaccines. Now, some of them have made a discovery that might hold the key to treating not only COVID-19, but all coronaviruses.

When the first vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna became available at the end of 2020, a team of scientists from UT saw years of work come to fruition. Long before the world had heard of COVID-19, the team was studying coronaviruses, a family of viruses that typically cause upper respiratory illnesses, including the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) and some colds.

Now, years after COVID emerged, the team’s work continues.

“We’re constantly getting more information which helps us fine-tune our strategies,” said Jennifer Maynard, a professor in UT’s Chemical Engineering Department. “We’re constantly learning more about this virus and how it can change, and we have to adapt in response.”

Maynard and her lab began collaborating with Jason McLellan, a UT professor credited as one of the inventors of the technology used in popular COVID vaccines, in 2019. Their work focused on spike proteins, which dot the surface of a coronavirus and help it to fuse with human cells, kicking off an infection.

According to researcher Annalee Nguyen, this work was on pause while she and her colleagues considered what angle to take in their research. Then, COVID-19 emerged, and they kicked into high gear. Nguyen pulled her research out of the lab freezer — literally. She and others in Maynard’s lab looked for antibodies that could hinder this new coronavirus by adapting research that was initially geared toward MERS.

“We have these big libraries of a bunch of different antibodies to look through, and then we’d try to find the ones that bind to something interesting,” Nguyen said.

It worked. Last month, Nguyen co-authored a study highlighting antibodies that bind to a specific area of the coronavirus’ spike proteins — a small hinge called an epitope. It’s unlikely to mutate and is also found across all known pathogenic coronaviruses. Folks at UT are calling this component the “Achilles’ heel” of coronaviruses.

More COVID protection?

Nguyen and her colleagues hope their research could bring about vaccines and treatments that work for most coronaviruses. They also hope it could help against COVID-19.

While experts say the COVID vaccines currently available do a good job against severe cases of the disease, there is room for improvement.

Vaccines like those created by Moderna and Pfizer deliver a bit of genetic material called mRNA to the body. The mRNA teaches cells to recognize the spike proteins found on the surface of coronaviruses. If someone has been vaccinated, their body will know to fight back against the virus when it enters the body and prevent the spike proteins from fusing with cells.

But SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is good at mutating, creating new variants that the body is not as prepared to fight.

“It changes very quickly, which we’ve seen as the coronavirus sort of evades our own immunity from either vaccination or from getting sick,” Maynard said.

Nguyen walks through her spike protein research in the lab. Alyssa Olvera / KUT

This is where the latest research from UT comes in. Maynard’s lab is focused on a different area of the spike protein, a region that’s more stable and less prone to mutation.

The spike protein has two main regions. Together, they form something that Maynard says looks a bit like a lollipop. There’s a round head region that binds to receptors on cells; this is the area that can easily mutate. There is also a stem region — the stick of the viral lollipop — that remains stable and is not prone to mutation because it holds important machinery that allows the virus to invade cells.

By focusing on this stable stem region, Maynard and her colleagues believe it’s possible to develop vaccines coronaviruses will have a harder time evolving around.

Researchers have already identified a type of antibody that attacks the epitope, found in the stem region. So far, the antibodies haven’t been able to completely neutralize SARS-CoV-2. However, Nguyen says a vaccine using this method might potentially offer a degree of protection against a whole array of illnesses, making the effects of current and potential coronaviruses less potent.

“Then [if a new coronavirus emerges] you at least have the benefit of potentially not having this been your first-ever exposure to something similar,” Nguyen said. “That’s the big problem with SARS-CoV-2, is that so many of us had never seen anything that our body could recognize about it.”

Antibody therapies

In addition to vaccines, research on this stem region of the spike protein could lead to antibody therapies for coronaviruses. Researchers saw the antibodies trigger an immune response that kills infected cells.

This would be a boon in the fight against COVID-19, because the antibody treatments that were once popular to treat the illness aren’t effective anymore; COVID mutated to avoid them. The federal Food and Drug Administration has revoked its emergency use authorizations for all such treatments.

At this point, Maynard, Nguyen and their colleagues don’t yet have a timeline for when a treatment, vaccine or booster might be developed from their discovery. Maynard says the scientific method is still well underway.

“We have these hypotheses we don’t know the answer to, and we’re going to go test and see what the different benefits and tradeoffs of these different approaches [are],” Maynard said. “We’ll hopefully use that information then to design something that will work really well for everybody.”

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it  here . Your gift helps pay for everything you find on  texasstandard.org  and  KUT.org . Thanks for donating today.

More from 04/17/2023

Texas’ pro sports teams get behind gambling bills

Some Dallas City Council members oppose TxDOT plan to trench I-345

State Senate weighs a bill that would end professor tenure as we know it in Texas

What to expect at the upcoming 12th installment of the ATX Television Festival

Kerrville leaders prepare for Hill Country city to triple in size by 2050

Dallas under pressure to share air sensor data that can reveal health risks as quickly as possible

Texas Standard for April 17, 2023: TxDOT wants to bury a highway. The Dallas City Council wants to get rid of it.

The texas standard is a partnership of.

©2024 Texas Standard. A service of the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin | Contact us

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

U. of Texas at Austin Will Return to Standardized Test Requirement

The university said SAT and ACT scores help it place students in programs that fit them best.

By Stephanie Saul

The University of Texas at Austin said Monday that it would again require standardized tests for admissions, becoming the latest selective university to reinstate requirements for SAT or ACT scores that were abandoned during the pandemic.

A few years ago, about 2,000 colleges across the country began to move away from requiring test scores, at least temporarily, amid concerns they helped fuel inequality. But a growing number of those schools have reversed those policies, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, M.I.T., Georgetown and Purdue, with several announcing the changes in recent months.

U.T. Austin, which admits a cross-section of high-achieving Texas students under a plan designed to increase opportunity in the state, cited a slightly different reason than the other schools in returning to test requirements. Without requiring test scores, officials said, they were hampered in placing the admitted students in programs they would be most suited for and in determining which ones needed extra help. After making test scores optional the past few years, the university will now require applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores beginning Aug. 1, with applications for fall 2025 admissions.

In an interview, Jay Hartzell, the U.T. president, said that the decision followed an analysis of students who did not submit scores. “We looked at our students and found that, in many ways, they weren’t faring as well,” Dr. Hartzell said.

Those against testing requirements have long said that standardized tests are unfair because many students from affluent families use tutors and coaches to bolster their scores. But recent data has raised questions about the contention. In reinstating test requirements, some universities have said that making scores optional had the unintended effect of harming prospective students from low-income families.

Brown , for example, said that some students from less-advantaged backgrounds had chosen not to submit scores under the test-optional policy, even when submitting them could have actually increased their chances of being admitted.

But U.T. Austin operates under a race-neutral admissions rule adopted more than two decades ago to allow a broader group of students to attend, automatically admitting those in Texas who graduated in the top 6 percent of their high school classes.

Among the students from Texas admitted to the university, 75 percent are regarded as “automatic admits.” Other Texas students, as well as out-of-state students, are evaluated through a “holistic” admissions process that includes standardized test scores. In the admissions process for last year’s entering class, 42 percent of students opted to submit their test scores.

Miguel Wasielewski, the university’s vice provost of admissions, said that many of those students have 4.0 grade point averages. “There’s just not a lot of variation there,” he said, adding that the test scores provide more granular information that helps determine placement.

At U.T. Austin, students are asked to rank their choices among three programs of study. Test scores help the university place those students in the major where it thinks they can succeed and identify students who need more support , part of an effort to boost graduation rates. The university’s four-year graduation rate climbed to 74.5 percent in 2023, up from 52 percent in 2013.

The scores are particularly important in determining which students will do well in the university’s more rigorous programs, such as engineering and business, Dr. Hartzell said.

According to the university’s figures on its current first-year class, a group of 9,217 students admitted last fall, students who submitted test scores were 55 percent less likely to have a first semester G.P.A. below 2.0, the university said.

Those who submitted test scores had higher G.P.A.s — an average of .86 grade points higher — in the fall semester, according to the university, which said the data was controlled for factors such as high school grades and class rank.

Dr. Hartzell said the university had consulted with the College Board, which runs the SAT, and found that nearly 90 percent of the students who apply to U.T. Austin have taken either the SAT or the ACT.

Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul

UT Austin will again require standardized test scores for admission

Lee esta historia en español

UT Austin will once again require students to submit their SAT or ACT test scores for admission, the university announced Monday . UT put the requirement on hold in spring 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The requirement will go into effect for the fall 2025 semester.

UT President Jay Hartzell said reinstating the requirement is part of the university’s goal to attract top students and ensure they’ll be successful in college. He said UT has found the test score is a key predictor of student success.

"But also a predictor of where we need to be more diligent, supportive of the students that come our way and do all we can to position them to succeed," he said. "If we're going to get to where we believe we can go in terms of graduation rates and success this is an important tool for us to get there."

He said UT had been looking at the impact of the test-optional policy.

"After a year we found that students who did not submit their scores were less likely to perform as well," he said.

UT is not alone in reinstating standardized test requirements. While many colleges and universities stopped requiring scores during the pandemic, several elite institutions have changed course on their test-optional policies. So far this year, selective universities such as Yale , Brown and Dartmouth shared plans to require standardized test scores again.

Other schools in Texas are still test-optional. Texas State does not require SAT or ACT scores for first-time applicants. Texas A&M does not require them for freshmen but encourages students to submit scores if they have them.

UT had a record 73,000 applicants last year, and the university estimates that about 90% took a standardized test. Forty-two percent of freshman applicants for the fall 2024 semester asked for their SAT or ACT scores to be considered as part of their application. Nearly half of the students applying under Texas’ auto-admit rule — because they’re in the top 6% of their high school class — also asked that their standardized testing scores be considered.

Some current UT students said they are wary of the test scores being required again.

Freshman Alexa Bradford did not initially submit her scores. A couple of months after she applied, though, the School of Engineering asked her to submit her math score, which she did. And, she got in.

Still, she doesn't think an SAT score is the best indicator of what students can achieve.

"I don't think the SAT is a great representation of how you are overall as a person," she said. "I don't think one test should determine that on one day or one specific thing."

Blanca Cuesta, a sophomore who is also studying engineering, did not submit her test scores when she applied. She said she isn't a big fan of requiring the SAT or ACT for admission and she does not think they say much about how a student will do once they're in college.

"I wouldn't say my SAT scores were bad, but they weren't crazy high," she said. "But I think I'm doing just fine in my major here."

Jessica Meave said she didn't submit her test scores, either. She pointed out that future applicants who will have to meet this requirement were also affected by the pandemic.

"A lot of those kids were COVID kids, too, and they didn't get to see the importance of the SAT scores," she said. "They were told it doesn't really matter."

In contrast, Wane Jeng, a junior at UT, said he thinks requiring the test scores is helpful. But he said scores should just be one piece of what the university considers in the admissions process.

"There is other important stuff that colleges should [consider], especially extracurriculars, like what you did in high school," he said.

UT said the scores will be just one part of a “holistic” college admissions process.

Hartzell and Miguel Wasielewski, vice provost for admissions, addressed concerns that requiring SAT and ACT scores could be an advantage for students who can afford test prep. Both said scores will be evaluated in context, for example, if a student is coming from a school with fewer resources to prepare students for standardized tests.

"We know that students come from a very different set of backgrounds," Wasielewski said, "and so when we have our holistic reviewers look at files, the first thing they do is understand what the profile is of the high school, what circumstances the students are coming from and what their environment is like."

While scores will not change the outcome for automatic admits, Wasielewski said, UT can use the test results to help match students with majors and identify who might benefit from additional support.

UT said it is making other changes to the admissions process, including giving students more options for what they can write about in the required admissions essay. The university is also encouraging students to get letters of recommendation from outside their high schools, if they decide to submit one.

Wasielewski said the recommendation letters can be a burden for high school teachers and counselors. He added that the information included in those letters is also often reflected elsewhere in the application.

"During a holistic review, there's only so much time to review that file and so to the extent that things can be original within that application, I think that does more for the student," he said.

Other changes include a new Early Action program that will give students who apply by Oct. 15 the guarantee of a decision by Jan. 15. The Early Action deadline for summer/fall 2023 admissions was Nov. 1. UT said it’s also introducing a waitlist for students who are not automatically admitted.

All of the changes will begin with the application period that starts Aug. 1 and ends on Dec. 1.

The University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium

Note: Our model uses COVID-19 hospitalization data and anonymized cell phone mobility data provided by SafeGraph for the Austin-Round Rock MSA to estimate the local state of the pandemic and to make short-term projections of COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU needs.

The  effective reproduction number R(t)  is an epidemiological quantity used to describe the contagiousness of a disease. An epidemic is expected to continue if  R ( t ) is greater than one and to end if  R ( t ) is less than one. It can be interpreted as the average number of people that an infected case will infect. The value of  R ( t ) depends on the basic infectiousness of the disease, the number of people that are susceptible to infection, and the impact of social distancing, mask wearing and other measures to slow transmission.

The  probability the epidemic is growing  is equal to our estimated probability that  R ( t ) is greater than one.

The  doubling time  is the estimated number of days it takes for the number of newly infected COVID-19 cases in the Austin area to double.

The 14-day change  is the estimated increase/decrease in the number of newly infected cases as compared to two weeks prior.

For more detailed information visit  Austin COVID-19 transmission estimates and healthcare projections .

Share this page

Two New Studies by UT Experts Unveil Key Insights Into Long COVID

Jan. 29, 2024

Two new studies out of UT Health Austin’s Post-COVID-19 Program are revealing significant insights into long COVID, including who is affected, the cluster of symptoms they experience and how their lives are impacted.

AUSTIN, Texas — Health care providers are learning critical new information to help improve care for patients with long COVID, thanks to a pair of recent studies out of the Post-COVID-19 Program at UT Health Austin, the clinical practice of Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin . Over the past several months, UT researchers have edged closer to defining the pattern of symptoms it generates and how it affects patients, as well as developing methods to differentiate patients suffering from long COVID versus other conditions.

While consensus around the clinical definition is evolving, the National Institutes of Health  defines long COVID as symptoms and conditions of COVID-19 that linger for weeks, months or even years after a person’s initial infection. Even people who had no symptoms when they were infected can develop symptoms later.

“These research efforts are instrumental for both clinicians and health systems in grasping the complexities of long COVID, and as part of providing the highest possible care for patients,” said W. Michael Brode , M.D., medical director of the Post-COVID-19 Program.

Brode highlighted that long COVID, which occurs in approximately 10% of COVID-19 cases, remains a challenge.

“Our research is not only refining the definition and treatment needs for long COVID but also demonstrating the effectiveness of innovative testing methods,” said Brode, who is also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Dell Med. “These methods are capable of identifying and diagnosing long COVID’s common issues, even when traditional tests fall short.”

Research findings from the studies include:

Clinical Characteristics of Long COVID Patients

Research published in Scientific Reports aims to understand the experiences of long-COVID patients to improve services at specialized post-COVID clinics. The study of 252 patients found that they experienced complex and disabling symptoms regardless of the severity of their initial infection, age, gender or if they had preexisting health problems.

Patients reported a median of 18 new symptoms after recovering from COVID-19 illness. The most common were fatigue (89%), “brain fog” (89%), and difficulty concentrating (77%).

Almost half displayed mild cognitive dysfunction on testing, and 65% of patients rated their mental health and 73% their physical health as “fair” or “poor.” The disease significantly affected patients’ ability to work, with a decrease in full-time employment and an increase in unemployment rates.

Metabolic Fingerprinting to Distinguish Long COVID From Fibromyalgia   

This groundbreaking study, done in collaboration with researchers at Ohio State University, introduces a blood test that can differentiate between patients suffering from fibromyalgia versus long COVID with 100% accuracy.

Published in Biomedicines , the study presents a promising approach for differentiating between long COVID and fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a chronic disorder that causes pain and tenderness throughout the body, as well as fatigue and trouble sleeping — symptoms that tend to overlap with long COVID. Neither condition currently has a diagnostic test.

The study involved 100 adult patients, half diagnosed with long COVID and half with fibromyalgia. Researchers found a distinct chemical marker in the blood of fibromyalgia patients, which was absent in those with long COVID. The blood test is quick and could easily be conducted in clinics, potentially leading to quicker and more accurate diagnoses, according to Brode.

“We hope findings can not only enhance our understanding of long COVID but also pave the way for targeted diagnostics and interventions,” said Brode. “ Millions of Americans are still living with the scars of the pandemic, and we hope to translate these insights into tangible health care solutions .”

COVID-19 Vaccines

Authorized COVID-19 vaccines have been proven to be highly effective at preventing the COVID-19 infection, particularly severe illnesses and death. To safeguard yourself and those around you from COVID-19, we strongly encourage all members of the UT community to receive the vaccine. For assistance in determining if you are up to date with current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, please refer to this page .

Are up to date on your COVID-19 vaccination?

For assistance in determining if you are up to date with current recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, please refer to this page .

COVID-19 vaccination recommendations are based on:

• The type of vaccine you received.
• The length of time since your last dose.
• Your current vaccination status – if you are unvaccinated or if you have only received one monovalent vaccine.

People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised have different vaccination recommendations .

2024 COVID-19 Vaccine Administration

Location: University Health Services, Allergy Immunization and Travel Clinic, Student Services Building, 2.102

Eligibility: Available for UT Austin students, faculty and staff.

Booking: Online bookings only through the MyUHS portal . Phone booking is not available. Appointments are limited.

Scheduling: Booking opens two weeks in advance. If no slots are available, they are already taken.

Vaccine Information: The administered vaccine is SPIKEVAX, developed by Moderna.

Additionally, you can receive your flu vaccine in addition to your 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine during all of these clinic dates and on November 17. Learn more about flu shots .

Charges and Insurance

There is a $186 charge for the updated fall 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine. For insurance plans that are in-network at UHS , the vaccine is commonly covered with no out of pocket cost. For patients with insurance that is not accepted by UHS, a courtesy claim will be filed, and any remaining balance will be posted to your What I Owe account. For individuals without insurance, the $186 charge will be posted to your What I Owe.

Important Through the Bridge Access Program , individuals who are uninsured or underinsured can access the vaccine for free. While UHS does not qualify as a Bridge Access Program participant, there are several conveniently located off-campus facilities that do, including:

• CVS Pharmacy located at 2021 Guadalupe St, Austin, TX 78705
• CVS Pharmacy located 2927 Guadalupe St, Austin, TX 78705
• Community Pharmacy located at 3701 Guadalupe St #102, Austin, TX 78705

Use the CDC vaccine search tool to find the Bridge Access Program participant nearest you.

Effective September 1st, 2023 — Senate Bill 29 added Chapter 81B to the Texas Health & Safety Code. It bars government entities from imposing face-covering or vaccine mandates or closing private businesses and schools due to COVID-19.

INFORMATION

Specific questions.

100 West Dean Keeton Student Services Building (SSB)

Reminder About COVID-19 Guidance

Dear Faculty,

As we welcome our students back to campus and begin the 2023-24 academic year, I want to remind you of UT’s Exposure Action Chart for COVID-19 . This guidance follows current recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Please also reference the Guidance for Ending Self-Isolation to inform your expectations around student attendance if they have tested positive.

As COVID-19 has shifted from pandemic to endemic, we anticipate that we will continue to see intermittent upticks of the virus — similar to seasonal upticks with the flu or other respiratory viruses. We don’t want to put our faculty and instructors in the position of managing students’ illnesses or return to class, so please refer students to the exposure action chart to manage their own healthcare. Further, as has always been the case, please refrain from classroom notifications about exposure to COVID-19 as you would not share notifications for any other illness.

It’s important that we all follow this guidance to maintain consistency across campus. We want to ensure students have a clear understanding of how they can manage possible infection and when they should return to class.

I encourage you to familiarize yourself with these guidelines, as they may have changed since the last time you reviewed them.

Tasha Beretvas

Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs