Analysing emerging themes in the ‘new’ environment of living with COVID-19, through the twin lenses of care homes and university campuses

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The UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock pleaded with young people to "not kill your gran" after he confirmed the surge in coronavirus cases was associated with younger people.  Sharing this concern,  Jo Grady, General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) is reported (The Times, 11th September) as saying  that the mass return of students to campuses, "could lead to universities being the care homes of any second wave of Covid". This surge of the spread of COVID-19 primarily amoung young people in recent weeks all over Europe has become a worrying emerging theme. Others include unemployment, digital and broadband "poverty" as well as a trend to inreased alcohol consumption,  larger unsafe social gatherings and a fear of using public transport. Our project will examine and describe these and other emerging themes through the twin lenses of the experiences of care home staff, university staff and students and how that may be generalised to society as a whole through an analysis of the NPA Covid-19 themes of clinical aspects, health and wellbeing, technology solutions, citizen engagement/community response and economic impacts.  Through closely working with the other thematic projects and the wider NPA Covid-19 Response basecamp group emerging themes will be identified and analysed. Data will be gathered on these themes, their impact and how regional, local and government authorities have addressed these issues.  The findings from this work be shared through a webinar(s) and a final report to be submitted to the CoRE project and the NPA.  We will also assess how our learnings could be transferrable to other areas.  Additionally, we will aim to publish our findings in academic journals, report them to the goverrnments and regional authorities of the NPA countries and present them at conferences including the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland in 2021.

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