Video has script and editing by Kléber Casablanca
Production and interview: Patricia Lauretti
On Tuesday, March 10, Beatriz commented to her friends how strange it was that Italy was in such a difficult situation because of the pandemic while in Spain, “everything was still normal”. Two days later, the University of Jaén, where she studies, closed its doors. "It was all very fast. On Thursday, a lot of news started to break out and the college announced that we would no longer have classes.” Spain declared a state of emergency on March 14th.
Exchange student Beatriz Moysés is a Pharmacy student at Unicamp and has been in the city of Jaén, in the south of the country, since January. Her story is part of a three-episode series, produced by Unicamp TV, showing how the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus has affected the lives of Brazilian students who are abroad. In this first episode Beatriz tells us about her life in isolation and talks about expectations, care and feelings in relation to the pandemic.
The series will continue with three more interviews carried out with exchange students in France and China. These are students who passed internationalization notices, carried out by the Executive Directorate of International Relations (DERI). 27 undergraduate students continue in European countries, mainly in Portugal, and South America.
Unicamp's executive director of International Relations, Mariano Laplane, highlights that the first institutional action was to get in touch with exchange students who were in China. "We quickly tried to adapt to the new circumstances. We tried to inform ourselves about the possibilities of return, find out about the guidelines of the partner institutions and we also asked everyone to contact the nearest Brazilian Consulate and keep us informed. We let each person make the decision to return or not."
Laplane said that from then on, actions were also planned in other countries. Students received notices to follow the guidelines of the health authorities and maintain contact with Unicamp. "In addition to this situation, we had to maintain service to international exchange students in Campinas. All this mapping allowed us to think of alternatives to minimize the loss of those who had to interrupt their exchange activities. We plan alternatives for later resumption, in the second semester", he stated .
According to him, the students who expressed interest returned, except those whose flights were cancelled, but all are expected to return. "Those who decided to stay assessed that the health security and study conditions allowed them to continue abroad."
