Daily Business Report-Dec. 29, 2020
Classes at San Diego State University are not in session during the pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci:
California college students can likely
return to campus in the fall
By Maddie Beck | CalMatters
While coronavirus cases are surging across California and overwhelming intensive care units, the country’s top infectious disease expert said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that college students can return to campus in the fall.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he anticipates that COVID-19 vaccines will begin to become widely available to the general public in March and April, and that immunization combined with aggressive testing of students would bode well for an in-person school year.
“If we do that efficiently, and the doses of vaccine come in … by the time we get to April, May, June, July, August, we can get the overwhelming majority of the people in this country vaccinated so that by the time we get to the 2021-2022 term, I think we could be in good shape,” Fauci said.
Fauci made the comments in a live-streamed conversation with California State University Chancellor Tim White before Christmas. The university, one of the first nationwide to pivot to online education this spring announced last week it expects its nearly 500,000 students will return to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, citing the progress on producing COVID-19 vaccines.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has so far authorized two separate vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna, for inoculation against the virus.
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Nonprofits on the Classy platform on track
to raise over $900 million in 2020
Despite the challenges of 2020, Classy, San Diego-based creator of online fundraising software for nonprofits, revealed that nonprofit organizations on its platform are on track to collectively raise over $900 million for social good in 2020, with the biggest giving day of the year, Dec. 31, still to come. This year has already been the largest fundraising year on the platform to date.
Nonprofits have worked tirelessly to pivot their strategies and rally their supporters to address the effects of the global pandemic, fight systemic racism, and advance their causes this year, and donors demonstrated their unwavering commitment to these missions. More than 9.2 million individual donations were made on the platform from over 4.3 million donors in 2020.
“In the most challenging of times, Americans are answering the call to help each other and our society. We are humbled and inspired by the way our nonprofit community has exemplified this in 2020,” said Scot Chisholm, Classy CEO and co-founder. “We’ve seen incredible resilience from our nonprofit customers who are finding new ways to fundraise in an online world to continue to serve their communities.”
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Dalrada Health Products to acquire
San Diego-based International Health Group Inc.
Dalrada Financial Corp. subsidiary Dalrada Health Products has executed Letters of Intent to acquire 100 percent of San Diego-based International Health Group Inc. through an all stock and cash exchange agreement.
International Health Group Inc. has been the leading provider of Medical Assistant programs including CNA and HHA training throughout San Diego County since 2006, according to Dalrada. IHG is the first nursing school in San Diego to offer the fast track 22-Day CNA Certification Program. IHG offers a state-approved testing facility in addition to the most spacious and equipped lab facility in San Diego.With the largest network of different employers and student resources in San Diego County, those interested in working in the medical field will be guided to careers in hospitals and nursing homes by IHG’s Licensed Vocational Nurses.
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PSAR Realtors group to present
Legal Update from CAR
The Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors (PSAR) will host its annual “Legal Update” with Gov Hutchinson, assistant general counsel with the California Association of Realtors (CAR), from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, Friday, Jan. 15, over Zoom.
Hutchinson, who manages CAR’s Member Legal Services Program and advises Realtors through CAR’s Legal Hotline, will share the latest information on real estate-related legal cases and relevant new laws for 2021, as well as new rule changes and pending legislation. He also has coauthored continuing education courses and is a master instructor with certification from the Department of Real Estate. PSAR’s webinar is free and all San Diego-area real estate professionals are invited to attend. For more information, call (619) 421-7811 or visit www.psar.org.
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California students rush to apply for DACA
for the first time in three years
With the door to apply for DACA open for the first time in more than three years, hundreds of high school and college students in California are rushing to apply, fearful it will be slammed shut again.
“We’re on a mad dash to put out as much educational content for folks as possible,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the state and local policy manager for United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. “We know that this window is open, but we don’t know for how long.”
A federal judge ordered the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services on Dec. 4 to fully restore Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that provides temporary protection from deportation and permission to work for about 700,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children.
Court battles ensued after the Trump administration attempted to end DACA in September 2017, and first-time applications have not been accepted since then. Although the attempt to end the program was described as “arbitrary and capricious” by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, the Trump administration continued denying new applications until Dec. 7, after a federal judge ordered them to begin accepting them.
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Major upgrade under way
at the world’s largest outdoor shake table
Earlier this year in San Diego, two giant cranes lifted the 330,000 lb. steel floor, or platen, off the world’s largest outdoor shake table, revealing a complex network of pipes, wires and catwalks. This was the first step in a major $16.3 million upgrade to the seismic simulator funded by the National Science Foundation.
Over the next 10 months, the facility will undergo major construction. When completed in October 2021, the shake table will be able to reproduce multi-dimensional earthquake motions with unprecedented accuracy.
“We take a lot of pride in having such accuracy,” said Joel Conte, principal investigator of the UC San Diego shake table and a professor in the Department of Structural Engineering. “It’s very, very difficult to achieve on such a large shake table.”
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Study finds use of firearms by female
nurses who die by suicide on increase
In a new study, University of California San Diego School of Medicine and UC San Diego Health researchers report that the rate of firearm use by female nurses who die by suicide increased between 2014 to 2017. Published Dec. 21, 2020 in the journal Nursing Forum , the study examined more than 2,000 nurse suicides that occurred in the United States from 2003 to 2017 and found a distinct shift from using pharmacological poisoning to firearms, beginning in 2014.
As part of the longitudinal study, researchers looked at data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System dataset.
“In past research, we determined opioids or other medications were more commonly used as the suicidal method in female nurses,” said senior author Judy Davidson, research scientist at UC San Diego. “From those findings, there was a possibility that there might be a change in the way nurses die by suicide over time. Now that we’ve looked at the data with a focus on firearms, we are finding that shift and it’s resulted in an increase in female nurses sadly taking their own life through the use of firearms.”
