Prior to 2020, the medical branch had more than 400 volunteers throughout its campuses. “We now have only about 150 active volunteers,” said Holly Jolin, administrative manager for Volunteer Services at UTMB. “We are looking for caring, compassionate and friendly people with a heart for helping to volunteer.”

Play that helps with exercise for babies during the tummy time can be placing yourself or a toy just out of reach of the baby. Dr. Sally Robinson offered more tips for parents in her column.

“Recent work may have found why some of us do not appear to get sick from COVID-19,” wrote Drs. Norbery Herzog and David Niesel in Medical Discovery News. “The latest thinking is that some people have a variant gene that doesn’t prevent a ‘super dodger’ from becoming infected but makes it so that they don’t get sick.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services rabies bait program is in its 28th year, wrote Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp in their Vaccine Smarts column. The program has successfully eliminated the domestic dog-coyote, and the fox rabies virus strains from the state. Rabies bait is a vaccine and is part of an overall strategy to protect us from the lethal disease.

Scientists really haven't had the tools — or funding — to detect new viruses inside people, said Dr. Gregory Gray, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “We probably have novel viruses in North America infecting people who work a lot with animals, especially domestic animals,” he said. “We're just missing them because we don't often have the tools to pick them up.”

Herman A. Barnett III, a Black veteran, desegregated the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1949. Technically, Barnett was admitted to the school on a contract basis — to uphold racial segregation, the university leadership planned to build an entirely separate medical school for Black students where Barnett would be required to transfer. But that school was never built, and Barnett graduated from UTMB in 1953.

The WHO says monoclonal antibodies being developed or antivirals that have been used in clinical trials for Ebola virus disease could also potentially be tested for Marburg virus disease. “There are several experimental treatments that have been shown to protect animals against lethal Marburg virus infection,” said Thomas Geisbert, PhD, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Past avian flus have moved from birds to other animals, but the number of mammals that have been infected recently is unusual, said Dr. Gregory C. Gray, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “There’s concern that it could further change and jump to humans,” he said.

What has become a major push among local groups to get information and life-saving medication into the community to fight a crisis of fentanyl overdoses and poisoning continued Saturday with a presentation about recognizing the signs of overdose and using Narcan. Taking Our Best Shot, a University of Texas Medical Branch student-led initiative held the first of several community health seminars Feb. 11 in Texas City.

Robots are making COVID-19 antibody tests for research and diagnostics faster and safer at the University of Texas Medical Branch, officials said. The benefit of having robots conduct the tests is that it will eliminate the risk staff members face from infection and produces tests at higher rates, said Dr. Michael Laposata, professor and chairman of the department of Pathology at the medical branch.