A subvariant of omicron that could spread more rapidly than the original omicron has been detected in Wisconsin.
A case of the subvariant, known as BA.2, was detected the week of Jan. 16 in Wisconsin, according to an online dashboard maintained by the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Unlike other public employees affected by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, which banned collective bargaining except for cost-of-living pay increases, UW Hospital workers are not state or municipal employees. When the hospital became a public authority separate from the university in 1996, it acquired its own special status. How Act 10 and other laws apply to that status accounts for most of the legal arguments over whether UW Health, one of the largest employers in Dane County, can recognize the union for collective bargaining.
Noted: Statewide, 69 percent of people are aware that global warming is happening, according to a 2020 University of Wisconsin-Madison report which said people are “eager” to hear from health professionals.
Quoted: “Everything we do alters the selective pressures on the virus,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If you wear a mask, then it pays for the virus to sit and wait. If you go to big parties and don’t wear a mask, it will favor viruses that are more aggressive, and that make you sicker so that they can move into new people faster.”
“The virus is like a horror movie villain,” said Thomas Friedrich, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine. “Every time you think it is dead, it comes back.”
Justin Giebel, 25, is a registered nurse in UW Health’s COVID ICU. Recently he’s had to work five night shifts in a row and then stay on for a day shift because the hospital was short-staffed by seven nurses. Many nurses Giebel works with have panic attacks at work, have needed to take leaves of absence or just left nursing altogether, he said.
The health care workers have partnered with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a national think-tank housed on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which works to build and support worker-centered partnerships, said director of the center Joel Rogers.
Noted: “The pandemic exacerbated a long-term trend,” said Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Population Health Sciences, on WPR’s “Central Time.”
Alcohol is pervasive in Wisconsin culture. A 2019 report called “The Burden of Binge Drinking in Wisconsin” from the UW-Madison Population Health Institute found the state’s rate of binge drinking to be higher than the U.S. overall.
Noted: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Institutes of Health published their study late last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, in which they analyzed a total of 1.6 million menstrual cycles, using anonymized data self-reported through a smartphone app by 267,000 people.
They found 22% of the people in their study had menstrual cycles that vary by a week or more, a finding that is consistent with other research on the topic, said Jenna Nobles, a UW-Madison demographer who led the study. Nearly all the study’s subjects identified as women, she said.
“Less than 1% of cycles are 28-day cycles with day 14 ovulation, even though that is the stylized version of menstruation that we all learn about,” she said.
Nobles conducted the research with UW-Madison graduate student Lindsay Cannon and NIH emeritus investigator Allen Wilcox, who is a physician and a renowned scholar of reproductive epidemiology. Wilcox’s previous research has served as the foundation of knowledge around topics including when in the menstrual cycle people get pregnant and how likely it is that people will have miscarriages.
“Fish oils, like any nutritional supplement, are not regulated by the FDA the way prescription drugs are, so you can never be quite sure of what you’re getting,” says James Stein, M.D., a professor of cardiovascular research at the University of Wisconsin. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re dangerous; it just means you might not be getting all you’ve paid fo
Quoted: Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health, said that helps eliminate a lot of the bias that may otherwise be present.
“To have folks studying medications, really any medications, within the confines and safety of a well-conducted clinical trial, that’s how we learn things in science,” said Pothof. “Those kinds of studies are welcome, although hard to do and time-consuming and resource-consuming.”
“I don’t think there is sufficient public discourse on what the big picture implications of this kind of technology becoming available [are],” said Dr. Karola Kreitmair, assistant professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jake Baggott, executive director of University Health Services at UW-Madison, describes campus preparations for students starting the spring 2022 semester as COVID-19’s omicron surge continues.
Here’s what guests on the Jan. 21, 2022 episode had to say about returning UW-Madison students in the midst of the Omicron surge, whether it has yet to peak in Wisconsin, medical ethics involved in treating COVID-19 patients and why the state figures so prominently in the national politics of election practices.
Cancer researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting help from a unique partner on campus – sharks.
Dr. Aaron LeBeau, an associate professor of pathology and lab medicine, and radiology, at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, will be leading the shark-based cancer research. It is currently the only research of its kind in the world.
Quoted: The outcome of patients across the country depends not only on the condition they have, but also their health and the care they receive. In a widely shared social media post before Christmas, a longtime ER nurse at University Hospital in Madison described in stark terms how the facility was overflowing with sick — and mostly unvaccinated — COVID-19 patients and the toll it takes on staff and other patients.
“I know that sometimes when I say goodbye to these people, I’m never going to see them again. Because they’re going to die. They’re never going to make it out of this place,” the nurse, identified only as Sue, said. “It’s hard. We have nurses leaving this profession. They’re burned out. They’re overworked.”
“The authors were incredibly thoughtful in how they approached the data and considered other variables,” said Dr. Nathaniel A. Chin, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the study. “They compared cataract surgery to non-vision-improving surgery — glaucoma surgery — and controlled for many important confounding variables.” Dr. Chin is the medical director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
The University of Wisconsin — Madison has indicated COVID vaccinations are required for any “student hourly employees” regardless of one’s remote status, and Prince George’s Community College in Maryland confirmed to TND that regardless of learning modality – in-person, hybrid, online – all students and faculty are required to show proof of vaccination.
Since the condition is so rare, Houser needed to be cared for by a neurosurgeon who was at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. After about a week and a half in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s, Houser was still unable to be transferred because there were no open beds at UW Madison for her.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows balance training using video games changed the brain structure of adolescents with autism and helped improve balance, posture and the severity of autism symptoms.
Brittany Travers, a UW-Madison occupational therapy professor and Waisman Center lead researcher, said she and her colleagues are interested in finding ways to better interventions that improve the motor skills of individuals with autism. She said prior research has shown balance control appears to plateau earlier in kids with autism than those without. As people age balance becomes more of a challenge for everyone, Travers said.
“But the speculation is that autistic individuals may be more at risk for falls and later in life if these balance challenges are not addressed,” Travers said.
Quoted: “We’re likely to see more infections, and those breakthrough infections can be quite serious,” said Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program. “I think any place where outbreaks are likely to happen – and certainly long-term care facilities are places where that can happen – we should be concerned.”
UW Health nurses were sounding the alarm on working conditions before COVID-19 strained the health care system to the brink.
The three largest University of Wisconsin System campuses are reporting spikes in positive cases of COVID-19 weeks before the start of spring semester classes. While some of the state’s smaller, private colleges push start dates back, UW campuses say they’re starting on time and in-person.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank told a faculty committee during a Monday meeting that she didn’t know what percentage of the campus community is boosted beyond those who received it at University Health Services. The university will be encouraging students and staff to report if they have been boosted off-campus to get a better picture of booster status across UW-Madison.
COVID-19 testing remains in high demand as cases continue to rise. Over 12,000 Wisconsinites tested positive in one day last week, a new record.
“It’s disheartening to be in this place where so many people are sick and there aren’t enough tests to keep up, but we can’t just pretend we aren’t sick, infect others, and carry on with our lives,” said UW Health chief quality officer Dr. Jeff Pothof.
Fiber is the material in plant-based foods that our body’s can’t digest. For a long time, scientists thought of it as junk, says Beth Olson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Today, we know that it’s essential. Fiber feeds the bacteria in our guts, which could have an indirect effect on everything from our mood to our immune systems, Olson says.
A local news report in Wisconsin quoting the lead doctor on the University of Wisconsin Health’s Moderna vaccine trial for children 6 months to 4 years old caused a stir on Covid and science Twitter over the weekend. That’s because he said FDA had again asked vaccine manufacturers to add a few hundred more kids to their trials. (Pros may recall this first happened over the summer.)
UW Hospital has had 65 to 80 COVID-19 patients the past two weeks, about 15% of total volume, spokesperson Emily Kumlien said.
Health officials in Dane Co. have already been sounding the alarm about running out of beds. UW Health’s Dr. Jeffery Pothof said last week the hospital is at 100% capacity, “trading patient for patient,” as it tries to help everyone coming to its doors.
In a study published Tuesday, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of sociology Jenna Nobles found those with irregular periods in states with restrictions may be less likely to access legal abortion.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says in its latest report that COVID-19 cases among children have reached the highest case count ever reported since the start of the pandemic — and hospitalizations are rising across the country.
In Wisconsin, 13 pediatric patients on average are being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 every day, according to federal data for the week ending Jan. 5. That’s a 71 percent increase from the previous week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That number is concerning to UW Health pediatrician Dr. James Conway.
“You know we’re certainly seeing more hospitalizations in adults. But kids, we’re still worried that we’re actually on the front end of the curve,” Conway said.
Quoted: Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained that “viruses like SARS-CoV-2 evolve as they replicate in a person with infection and as they spread from one person to the next. When that evolutionary process yields a strain that has a genetic make-up which is very different from the original virus, it is considered a ‘variant.’ ”
He added that “a virus is a ‘variant of concern’ if it has the potential to threaten the pandemic response in some way. It may be more infectious than other variants, cause more severe illness, not be detectable by current tests, less affected by current treatments, partially escape immunity provided by current vaccines, or a combination of these.”
Some private colleges and universities in Wisconsin are delaying the start of spring semester classes, requiring negative COVID-19 tests or vaccinations and boosters for students and employees amid a rapid surge of new COVID-19 infections. At the same time, the University of Wisconsin System says students “will return on-time and as normal” for classes starting this month.
Quoted: “This current increase is being fueled by the new omicron variant, which is more infectious than delta” — until recently, the predominant variant of the virus in Wisconsin, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and faculty director of the master’s degree in public health program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
According to a news release from UW Health spokesperson Emily Kumlien, UW has supplies of the two new oral antiviral pills, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir, to treat a total of 40 people. UW Health hospitalist Dr. Bartho Caponi said the short supply will keep new treatments restricted to people in the most need.
In a joint statement, the hospitals said a surge in coronavirus cases compounded by staffing shortages from health care workers getting infected have contributed to the decision to again postpone certain procedures.
UW Health’s chief quality officer Dr. Jeff Pothof said the health system is “extremely short staffed right now.” “We’re doing our best to care for as many patients as we can, but the need is outpacing our capacity,” said Pothof. “With COVID cases rising and staff out because they’re awaiting test results or have tested positive, we’re hitting our limits.”
Ellen Samuels has spent a lot of hours in loud, cramped MRI machines.
She said medical personnel would give her these “little headphones” to play music, but the sound of banging metal coils and vibrating electrical pulses all but muted that music.
So to pass the time, she would craft poems in her head. Without the ability to jot them down, she imagined haiku because the five-seven-five-syllable format was easier to remember.
‘Dry January’ is a New Year’s resolution where participants go alcohol-free for the first month of the year, and UW Health has tips to help you keep that resolution.
UW Health’s Dr. Jeffery Pothof says the hospital is at 100% capacity, “trading patient for patient,” as it tries to help everyone coming to its doors.
Children’s hospitals, including one in Madison, are strained with children fighting coronavirus, and a mix of factors explains why kids are the latest targets of the pandemic. “We’ve had more kids with COVID in the last couple of months, and certainly in the last month, that I can recall at any point in the pandemic,” said Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease physician and medical director of UW Health’s immunization program.
Pediatric vaccinations against COVID-19 are lagging, and UW Health reports it could be a cause for rising COVID-19 hospitalizations.
“With our hospitals as full as they are, we have needed to turn down the majority of the many daily transfer requests we’ve received recently,” said a spokesperson for UW Health.
UW Health, a spokesperson said, is forced to decline most transfer requests every day right now as they battle a COVID-19 surge amid a lack of beds and staff.
Despite a federal effort to expand lung cancer screenings to more individuals, research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows Black and Hispanic individuals were still less likely to be eligible for screenings than white counterparts.
Quoted: Dr. Nasia Safdar, Medical Director of Infection Control at UW Health, and Dr. Jeff Pothof, an emergency physician and chief quality officer with the UW Health system.
The number of people hospitalized has taken only a small dip in recent days, with an average of 115 people hospitalized over the last week, per Public Health data. Hospital officials have warned they are reaching a breaking point with COVID-19 patients, and UW Health said it is reducing the number of nonessential procedures it schedules amid the ongoing surge.
One of the largest health systems in southern Wisconsin said Tuesday it is on the brink of having more patients than it can treat.
Rooms are running out and medical staff are stretched thin at UW Health facilities as the Omicron variant drives a new surge of COVID-19 cases, the health system is warning. On Tuesday, UW Health Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof cautioned that if this trend continues, they may not have space or staff needed to care for the number of patients they are getting.
A COVID-19 surge driven by the omicron variant could overwhelm local hospitals, UW Health said Tuesday.
Nurse sharks (Ginglymostomatidae) are slow-moving, bottom-dwelling predators that stalk prey in warm shallow waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists suggest the sharks could lend a fin in a new, more effective treatment for Covid-19.
Quoted: “If you’re a virus and you turn off the innate immune system, it’s like a thief cutting off the alarms in a bank in order to sneak in,” said Thomas Friedrich, a professor in the department of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.
The latest COVID-19 wave has hit the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball program.
UW officials announced that the Badgers’ game set for Thursday night against George Mason has been canceled because of positive COVID-19 tests in the UW program.
University of Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh has tested positive for COVID-19 and will not travel to Las Vegas for UW’s bowl game.
McIntosh must quarantine for 10 days.
“I would encourage everyone to follow the advice of medical professionals and get vaccinated, boosted, tested and wear a mask,” McIntosh said. “Those mitigation measures may not keep us from contracting COVID, but there’s a good chance they will keep us from having a severe outcome.”
The latest COVID-19 wave that is sweeping across the University of Wisconsin campus has affected the UW football team.
Multiple sources close to the program told the Journal Sentinel Saturday both players and staffers tested positive in recent days and that the Badgers would be short-handed when they face Arizona State Thursday in the Las Vegas Bowl.
Although some may fear sharks when swimming in open waters, these often misunderstood creatures may hold a way to help protect us from the coronavirus, new research suggests. As one of the ocean’s top predators, sharks have antibody-like proteins that can stop the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study published Dec. 16.
UW Health is using virtual meeting technology to expand the use of eICU programs amidst a new wave of COVID-19, UW Health said Friday. According to UW Health, rural hospitals throughout Wisconsin are facing difficulties as emergency rooms continue to reach capacity.
The UW Carbone Cancer Center reflected on some of the lifesaving innovations and research done since that day, including a procedure called Mohs Surgery to treat patients with skin cancer and one of the most widely-used chemotherapy drugs in the world known as 5-FU.
Quoted: In Wisconsin, there were more deaths than births for the first time since the state began keeping vital records, said demographer David Egan-Robertson of the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
“It’s just been a complete sea change in terms of how we view the population,” Egan-Robertson said.
About 1,000 University of Wisconsin students working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic will be eligible for a new tuition incentive.
Now scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are testing a combination of targeted radiation, given by injection, with immunotherapy.
“We’re just delivering a very low dose to stimulate the immune system, not necessarily kill cancer cells,” explained Dr. Patel.
The researchers tested the therapy in mice and found that even when the mice were given a low dose of radiotherapy their immune systems revved up and wiped out the cancer.
Scientists say they plan to apply for FDA approval to conduct human clinical trials on the combination therapy.
