As many of you have seen on the news, there is a possibly serious situation with a novel virus called Wuhan coronavirus or 2019-nCoV happening right now and many of your students are going to ask you every question in the book. Here are some resources you can use with your students this week to help them understand what is happening in the world. (This blog post was updated on February 29, 2020, and these details may change over the next few days to weeks.)
There are a lot of new terms that might come up when students start reading about this new virus and one of those is Basic Reproduction Number. I am sending my email subscribers a two page guide to help teachers explain this concept (and the latest fast facts about 2019-nCoV) and putting it in my free resource library. If you would like to subscribe and receive this free handout, please subscribe with your email and you will receive access!
Here are some reputable news sources your students can use:
Highly Recommend: Johns Hopkins World Map that shows the infections and locations all around the world: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
New York Times Live Updates: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/26/world/china-coronavirus.html
Science News Comparison with other corona viruses: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-new-wuhan-coronavirus-stacks-up-against-sars-mers
Scientific American Q&A with an Infectious Disease Expert:
Here are some health organization pages your students can use to read more about the latest news on the virus:
The Center for Disease Control’s page on 2019-nCoV: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html
The World Health Organization’s page on 2019-nCoV: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
If you have other reputable links you think I should include, please feel free to reach out to me over Facebook or IG!
