The COVID 19 Pandemic, today can be considered as a “total social event” since it has put the whole of society and its institutions at stake, exercising coercive action on most people through panic and uncertainty. With great success Heraclitus around 520 BC wrote "Everything flows, everything changes", today a current phrase with the implications of the post-pandemic on our social behaviors and its effects on institutions.

 

"Viruses are disturbing because they are neither alive nor dead. They are not alive because they cannot reproduce on their own. They are not dead because they can enter our cells, hijack their machinery and replicate" (Arthur Galucha and Nuño Domínguez).

 

From March 6, the day the first case of COVID 19 was confirmed in our country in a young woman from Bogotá from Italy, to May 1, 56 days after the arrival of these microscopic visitors to Colombia, we have 7,006 confirmed cases. , of which 314 (4.5%) have died, 1,551 (22.1%) recovered, classified as mild 6,129 (87%), moderate 445 (6.3%) and severe 120 (4.5%) and the pandemic continues to progress without reaching its maximum peak. This is an occasion to highlight the strengthening of the network of public and private laboratories, which includes our Laboratory of Immunology and Molecular Biology, currently reaching nationwide 108,950 tests processed, corresponding to a rate of 2,163 tests per million of inhabitants, and a capacity to process 12,803 daily tests declared according to the availability of supplies and reagents by the network.

 

To intervene in the pandemic, the institutional framework was prepared with great success, issuing a series of regulations, of which I will only mention the most relevant for the higher education sector, as follows:

 

The Ministry of Health and Social Protection through Resolution 385 of March 12, declared the Health Emergency until May 30, 2020.

 

 

The Presidency of the Republic to mitigate the emergency and under the protection of the Constitution issued: Decree 417 of March 17, declared a state of economic, social and ecological emergency for thirty (30) days, Decree 457 of March 22 declared mandatory preventive isolation from March 25 to April 13, Decree 531 of April 8 declared mandatory preventive isolation from April 13 to 27.

 

 

The joint circular 11 of the Education Ministry and the Health Ministry of March 9, 2020 determined recommendations to detect cases and avoid infections.

 

 

The Ministry of National Education, through Directive 02 of March 19, 2020 dealt with virtual sessions and internal law, Directive 04 of March 22, 2020 on the use of non-attendance in face-to-face HEI programs and Directive 09 of April 7, informs that the measures taken in the framework of this emergency will be in force until May 31 of this year. In accordance with the university autonomy, and as it has been happening since March 15, the Higher Education Institutions will be able to continue offering their programs supported by the different technologies that allow them to continue the academic semester while the preventive isolation is fulfilled.

 

 

The previous regulations activated a detailed contingency plan, indicating personal measures, strategies for patient care by EPS and ARL, along with mandatory preventive isolation until May 11, suspension of classroom classes in kindergartens, schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions.

 

The execution of these exceptional measures of the state of emergency through quarantine and social distancing had its effects in the higher education sector, affecting about 3,783,802 students nationwide, and 45,991 students in Cauca of which about 39,000 students are located in Popayán, distributed in 1,945 postgraduate and 37,759 undergraduate.

 

In order to measure some impacts to the city's economy related to the cessation of face-to-face academic activities, on the occasion of the interventions against the pandemic, I mention the not insignificant resources that are moved to defray the regular expenses related to the payment of ground transportation and air payments to speakers, housing, food, cafeteria, cell phone, data plans, internet rooms and stationery, which together add up to move between $ 107 and $ 263 million per day, between $ 539 and $ 1,316 million per week, and for month between $ 2,265 and $ 5,530 million, resources that for a month have not been in the dynamics of the economic development of the city.

 

The first victims before quarantine were the medical and medical-surgical specialties students who had to withdraw from the practice sites as a preventive measure, since these places are those that have the highest risk of contagion, activities that cannot be developed through virtuality. In the same way, all the programs that demand laboratory activities, field visits and physical activity were affected.

 

The other difficulty that was evident is in the connectivity gaps that exist in Cauca and the neighboring departments where our students originate. In more than 50% of the municipalities there is a deficit in connectivity, where 2 out of 10 Colombians in stratum 1 have this possibility. Connectivity and education go hand in hand, and in Colombia about 21.7 million people have the privilege of having access to this technology. The population without access is concentrated in remote regions and in the cities this situation is evident in strata 1 and 2.

 

In this context, the University of Cauca will guarantee its students in the period between May 4 and June 27 of this year an offer of special courses through ICT, free and with the possibility of being taken as review, advance or repetition of missed subjects. In the same way, the payment for the expedition of peace and safe was temporarily exempted, the program "Return home" of the students who were trapped in the city was activated, benefiting to date 35 from Nariño, 67 from Huila and 8 del Caquetá, more than 200 financial subsidies were awarded, the Unicauca Solidaria campaign and the 'Sponsor a student' initiative are being carried out, actions that join the Solidarity Route led by a group of students supported by institutional transportation. Another aspect to highlight is the training of 816 teachers who attended the management course in teaching, learning and evaluation from home. Also noteworthy is the holding of 37 virtual conversations, Webinar, Facebook Live, academic dynamics that present an average of 10,000 reaches by users of social networks, with academic sessions on issues of economy, politics, society, environment, health, technology, among others, with the participation of national and international experts.

 

Our researchers in the economic areas are willing to accompany the departmental and municipal governments in conducting studies on the impacts of the pandemic, as well as our research groups today are carrying out work related to the search for alternatives to act in the pandemic and prepare to intervene in the post-pandemic effects.

 

Personally, I consider that it is not advisable in the short term to considerably reduce the direct interrelation of the teacher with the student with the use of ICT, since we still have a long way to go, we need to train and certify our teachers in the adequate use of educational resources offered by technology, a task that we have already advanced in a very important way. We have to prepare our students for the management of the different platforms and update studies of socio-economic characterizations of personal conditions versus connectivity, which will be the input to manage external projects that allow subsidizing data plans for students and facilitate the delivery of tablets.

 

Once the aforementioned purposes have been fulfilled, it is feasible to venture into some undergraduate and postgraduate offer proposals with a strong influence of virtuality. Only in this way will we be able to enter the world of the fourth industrial revolution timidly.

 

In conclusion, the pandemic came and exposed our academic shortcomings to offer ICT-assisted learning and home teaching proposals, increased visibility on the obvious and ignored gaps in structural connectivity and inequities in the access of an important student sector. Insisting on virtuality without correcting access is to accentuate inequities and violate the right to education. We hope in the post-pandemic period to have managed to correct all these shortcomings, being one of the positive aspects that COVID 19 will leave us. And from now on we must enlist, given the possibility of not having vaccines and effective treatments, to coexist with the distancing social for years to come.