Nearly 2,000 medical students are about to graduate. They can join the fight against the coronavirus crisis.

As we muster our resources to address the COVID-19 emergency, we must embrace expediency and innovation and reduce red tape as we work creatively and collaboratively to help our health-care professionals on the front lines. We must pull every rabbit out of our collective health-care hats.

One way to do that is to tap the talents of the hundreds of medical students currently finishing their education at Connecticut’s medical colleges.

These students have all completed clinical hospital rotations and are several weeks from getting their degrees. Then they must apply for licenses to practice in Connecticut. Student nurses approaching graduation this spring are in a similar situation — poised to move into their professional careers but typically on hold as schools have closed, clinical rotations have been reduced or frozen and everyone awaits new marching orders.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Massachusetts, medical schools including Harvard, Boston University, Tufts and the University of Massachusetts have decided to accelerate virtual graduation, and the Massachusetts Department of Human Services has announced it will quickly vet and then grant 90-day licenses to qualifying graduates so they can get to work in the coming weeks. Similar measures are being taken in many other states.

I am appealing to the Connecticut Department of Public Health and Commissioner Renee D. Coleman-Mitchell to do the same. I have spoken with Jeffrey A. Flaks, president and CEO of Hartford HealthCare and Dr. John M. Murphy, president and CEO of Nuvance Health, and I am reaching out to hospitals across Connecticut. These administrators fear the physical toll that the influx of sick, contagious patients will have on their medical staffs, and they are hoping to mitigate a severe human resource shortage through all safe measures possible.

This does not mean these new resident doctors and nurses will be cast into COVID-19 wards. Instead, they will provide critical backup, including joining rounds, taking clinical notes, placing orders, working with specialists, seeing families and assisting patients who have conditions other than COVID-19.

At Sacred Heart University, we have 119 nursing students scheduled to graduate in May. Even though our staff holds our students and themselves to the highest discipline and professional standards and normally would never agree to allow students to graduate early, these are not normal times. With most live clinical rotations now on hold, our students are honing their hands-on skills with sophisticated virtual clinical simulators under the watchful eyes of experienced teaching staff. We are doing everything in our power to get these critical and compassionate hands into local hospitals and clinics.

In 2019, 1,954 students graduated from Connecticut’s 19 nursing schools, many now licensed and practicing. Approximately the same number will graduate in 2020. I am confident all of these fine institutions would join together to work with the Board of Examiners for Nursing to encourage reinstating a graduate nurse permit in Connecticut, in lieu of the traditional registered nurse (RN) license, at least in the short term. This would allow qualifying students to practice immediately upon graduating, without having to wait months to complete the requirements for RN licensing.

Additionally, the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education is changing its regulations to allow fewer hours of clinical experience, as long as students close to graduating can meet all required competencies. This is especially important as physical therapy specialists work to promote lung expansion, strengthen respiratory muscles and help eliminate secretions, all symptoms synonymous with this illness. At SHU, we have 60 PT students poised to graduate, and when multiplied by our sister Connecticut programs, that would facilitate a valuable influx of PT professionals to work in hospitals or to back up other PT experts in outpatient settings.

We are prepared to face this contagion, no matter how challenging the odds, with resolve, tenacity and compassion. This is the true American spirit and the way we have dealt with crises in the past. We must let necessity and urgency replace bureaucracy.

I am asking Connecticut’s leaders to work with licensing boards, to be aggressively forward thinking and to proactively eliminate all barriers to enhancing our immediate in-state health-care response. We need to be doing whatever we can to support our health-care heroes. We cannot just sit back and wait to see what others do. Now is the time for nothing less than responsible and bold action.

Dr. John J. Petillo is president of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.