Entering the fight against COVID-19

First-year medical students received their first laboratory coats at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine White Coat Ceremony on Monday. The presentation and cloaking of the white coat confers a commitment to the values of being a physician: humanism, compassion, altruism, leadership, excellence, and devotion to the well-being of others.

Pictured above are (from left) Shrey Kapoor, Ashish Vankara, Pranjal Agrawal, and Divyaansh Raj, four students who received their white coats at the ceremony. They are also the co-chairs of the Johns Hopkins chapter of the South Asian Medical Students Association, through which they are aiding India's COVID-19 effort by filling in gaps identified by Johns Hopkins faculty and partners on the ground. This work includes helping nongovernmental organizations find resources and raise money; establishing protocols for in-home care for patients with COVID-19; helping combatting misinformation on social media; ramping up a rapid antigen testing program; and translating medical equipment instructions and videos into Hindi, one of the two official languages of the Indian government and the official language of many states. Dipak Subramaniam, a computer science graduate student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is working with the Johns Hopkins students on their initiatives.