As Coronavirus cases climb, so too has concern and fear. This week, over 10 states have declared a state of emergency and over 60 colleges (so far) have canceled their in-person classes across the country.
As a healthcare company offering the industry-leading medical Spanish training solutions, Canopy has been working on breaking the language barriers in healthcare and addressing language access for patients with limited-English proficiency for years. Now, what brings our attention is that, despite the daily news and updates on the coronavirus pandemic from all sources including the CDC, governments, broadcast and social media, there is not much information in Spanish for Spanish-speaking communities.
Take a closer look at these cases reported by the Tampa Bay Times on March 6, 2020, and you will be surprised by how much Spanish-speaking people are struggling to get up-to-date, first-hand information on coronavirus in Spanish, a language that they can understand.
The Health Office of Pinellas County in Tampa states on its website that Spanish speakers will be immediately available 24 hours a day if needed, but the fact is that a call picked up by a human operator could not be connected to any Spanish speakers immediately upon calling and told that the availability is only limited 7 am to 5 pm.
“It’s a difficult process to get service in Spanish, but the fact is that we need more resources in real time,” said Ana Lamb, president of the local council of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
If Florida, one of the top states with large Spanish-speaking populations, cannot even fill the gap in Spanish-language information, it really raises question marks for other states as well.
With limited access to information, mental pressure will soon come along as the next concern. “The worst thing we can do now is to be stressful and think that we are going to get sick tomorrow,” Lamb aired the concerns to a group of 25 people who attended her meeting in north Tampa.
If you simply Google online, no matter in English or Spanish, there is not much live tracking data of coronavirus available for Spanish speakers, even among those popular sources including CDC website, local health departments’, the New York Times, and CNN.
The CDC’s website which updates the total cases versus total deaths of COVID-19 from Mondays through Fridays does not offer a Spanish version unless your web browser translates it into Spanish with the Google Translate extension. This, however, does not guarantee 100% accuracy.
The New York State Health Department, for another example, has offered sufficient information of the coronavirus in multiple languages widely-spoken in New York including Spanish, Chinese, Russian, etc, but all of them are just downloadable documents in PDF format without any live data or updates unless you translate your webpages.
(If you know any great resources of the latest coronavirus updates in Spanish, please leave your comments below this post! Sharing information can help more people stay healthy!)
Over 100,000 healthcare professionals including physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners have been learning medical Spanish with Canopy. As the #1 medical Spanish online training program, Canopy offers a 40-hour curriculum in 3 proficiency levels, which includes various modules, interactive exercises, vocabulary flashcards, and customized telenovela drama series covering over 36 medical specialties.
Some of the most popular lessons across the all-3-level courses that gain more learning time amid this coronavirus epidemic are:
Source: Tampa Bay Times