Scientists from the University of the Philippines are designing a more affordable ventilator that will help patients with the novel coronavirus breathe, the health department said Wednesday as cases of the respiratory disease continued to climb.
 
The UP-National Institutes for Health in Manila has almost finished designing the ventilator, said Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire, who declined to give more details about the project.

If you were not able to watch the scheduled series of webinars of the UP Open University (UPOU) on How to Convert your Courses Online, fret not!  We’ve curated some of the best resources produced by UPOU to help you convert your courses online. These resources are Open Educational Resources (OERs) and  are licensed under Creative Commons which means that they are free and can be used by anyone.

The UP Diliman College of Science (UPD-CS) expressed its appreciation for its constituents who are actively helping the country respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a Facebook post, the College enumerated their efforts, which include lending equipment for COVID-19 testing, producing personal protective equipment (PPEs), donating supplies for frontliners and public hospitals, modeling disease transmission and ventilator production, and deploying personnel to testing centers.

Everyone is under stress trying to cope with the novel coronavirus pandemic, but students are especially vulnerable: They’ve lost access to their friends, their campus communities, and the structure and rhythm of the academic year. This special collection, available online and free, includes some of our strongest pieces on how faculty members can help students cope. The Chronicle of Higher Education also has a collection that includes articles on how to make online teaching more sensitive to student concerns, how to spot potential mental-health issues, and more.

A team of faculty members and staff at the University of the Philippines Cebu FabLab has designed and started 3D-printing face shield frames to contribute to the much-needed supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the fight against COVID-19.

The frame can be attached to a sheet of plastic or acetate to create a face shield that helps protect Cebu’s frontline health workers and other users against the coronavirus. Prototyping of the frame was initially created using a 3D printer but after a few tests they found out that using a laser cutter was much faster and yielded more results.