Executive vice dean of academics Dr. Susan Cox initiated the live commencement ceremony for the students' graduation, which was streamed on the school's official YouTube channel.

"We are celebrating our greatest hope at a time of unprecedented need," University of Austin president Gregory L. Fenves said, congratulating the 49 graduates of Dell medical school.

Anticlimactic end to medical school

The graduates then recited their Hippocratic oath, as 600 watchers composed of friends and family members sent their regards on the comment section.

Leonard Edwards, 34, said that he and the rest of the emergency medicine physicians and forebears merely watched the pandemic unfold before their eyes in the emergency room without the license to help. He added that now, as a graduate from medical school in the middle of a pandemic, it felt a bit "anticlimactic".

Nonetheless, in a month's time he would be heading to Detroit to complete his residency at Henry Ford Hospital. Like the rest of the graduates, he will be in the front lines of the pandemic as soon as he stepped out of his school's halls.

Edwards cancelled his wedding last month with his significant other. As much as they had to let it go, he said he was more motivated to start working. At this time, he wanted to help purge the world of the coronavirus as much as he could, and he would not appreciate giving the job to someone else.

He and his partner, who was also a fellow physician, were already mapping out logistics to prevent that from happening. He said that they wanted to take every precaution because the crisis was "real". In the midst of leaders and locals downplaying the pandemic, he firmly stood for the truth, which he believed was that everything was real.

On behalf of the medical field, Edwards continued saying that health workers all over the country were disappointed by the amount of misinformation being spread, and how many people were believing it. He added that it was their duty to regain the trust of the public, who were wary of the medical industry.

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Remote instruction for Texas colleges

Graduating medical students in the United States would open their match letters to find out where they would be completing their residencies within the following three to seven years. This year, Match Day was set last March 20.

Because of extended measures against the transmission of COVID-19, medical students from Dell, like many other universities, did not receive their match letters. Instead, they opened their emails together over video calls.

At the same time, clinical rotations for Dell students were cancelled two months ago in March. The alternative assignments they were made to do were to finish requirements from home. This included compilation and sharing of resources on how to communicate to COVID-19 patients and their loved ones.

Texas schools opted for remote instruction while social distancing was being encouraged. Other institutions would be sending off their own graduates virtually, promising a public outdoor ceremony in the future.