The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, UW-Stout and UW-La Crosse have announced they “expect” employees, students and guests to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, stopping short of reinstating a requirement as two other UW schools have.
Welcoming a new baby into your family is stressful enough, and adding the COVID-19 resurgence to the mix only makes things more complicated. A pediatrician from UW Health recommends having a conversation with close friends and family, and asking them to get vaccinated before spending time with your newborn.
Hospitalizations at UW Health have been on the rise for about two weeks, Dr. Ann Sheehy, division head of hospital medicine at the UW, said. “Each day we’re just a notch higher than we were the day before,” she said, pointing to the Delta variant.
Quoted: “It’s [the delta variant] able to bind to the cells in our nasal passages and our lungs more tightly and as a result someone who gets infected is more capable of pumping out a lot more virus,” said Dr. Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “If they have issues with their immune system or are immunocompromised, I would say now is probably not a great time to travel, because there are so many things that are outside of your control,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
Researchers studying how poverty and adversity affect children’s development often track how negative experiences — be they poverty itself or factors such as having an incarcerated parent — affect decision-making, stress levels or aspects of brain function. But Seth Pollak, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, says that most of these efforts miss a crucial but long-overlooked component: children’s perceptions of their experiences.
Pollak spoke with Knowable Magazine about the importance of studying individual differences in experience.
A top university official in Wisconsin is butting heads with state Republican legislators over who has the authority to impose COVID-19 restrictions on campus.
Just hours after a Wisconsin state legislature committee on Tuesday required all University of Wisconsin schools to receive permission before issuing new coronavirus guidance, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank reinstated her campus’s indoor mask mandate.
Quoted: “We know that masking allows children to be in school safely, reduces transmission of COVID, and, really importantly, if children are masked, then it provides much less disruption to kids, because they don’t need to be quarantined if they’re exposed to a case of COVID,” said Greg DeMuri, a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
State employees will have to wear face masks starting Thursday because of a surge in coronavirus cases, Wisconsin officials announced Wednesday.
The move came shortly after the two largest University of Wisconsin schools, in Madison and Milwaukee, put in place their own mask requirements. The policies are being enacted as the delta variant of COVID springs up around the world, including among those who have been fully vaccinated.
Branches of the University of Wisconsin and school districts in Arizona and Florida are ordering students and staff to wear masks indoors in spite of statewide regulations and laws that prohibit them from doing so, as the Delta variant’s rapid spread sparks new showdowns over mask orders between state and local governments nationwide.
Noted: The study started in Dane County and contains a disproportionate level of samples from that area, cautioned David O’Connor, one of the authors of the new study and a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Scientists stressed that despite having comparable levels of virus, vaccinated patients remain far less likely than the unvaccinated to become severely ill, hospitalized or die from COVID-19.
Also, O’Connor said the 83 Dane County cases showed that unvaccinated people are more than twice as likely to get the virus as those who’ve been vaccinated.
“What we’re seeing here is that the vaccines are doing a superb job of keeping people out of the hospital,” O’Connor said.
While 90% of UW Health’s staff are already fully vaccinated, there is room for further improvement and there is an opportunity to send a good message to patients, staff and the broader community, according to Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer, UW Health.
All UW Health employees will be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the provider announced Wednesday.
UW Health is requiring employees to get COVID-19 vaccinations, the organization said Wednesday, following similar decisions by several other health care systems in Wisconsin and pleas for health care worker vaccine mandates from many health care groups.
Analysis of nearly 300 COVID-positive samples collected in Wisconsin between June 28 and July 24 showed no significant difference in “viral load” between 79 fully vaccinated people and 212 unvaccinated people, according to a study by researchers at UW-Madison, Public Health Madison and Dane County and Exact Sciences.
The announcement came Wednesday morning, and amidst a resurgence of COVID-19 pandemic related regulations as cases are on the rise again — largely driven by the Delta variant.
The health system likened the new restriction to its extant policy of requiring them to have received a standard flu vaccine.
Quoted: “For this idea of boosters, it’s going to be hard to control. You just have to rely on local public health departments and local providers to prevent that from happening,” said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Colleges across the state are working to reevaluate on-campus masking policies in the weeks leading up to the start of the fall semester, as new national data on the delta variant’s spread among vaccinated people,updated masking recommendations and political pressure further complicate a quickly evolving situation.
University of Wisconsin officials who want to ward off a rising COVID-19 caseload now must get permission from the Legislature to implement masking, testing or vaccination requirements, according to a plan Republicans adopted Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced it would require students, employees and visitors wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status starting Thursday, as COVID-19 cases surge and political pressure mounts.
Construction of a separate facility for Usona comes as it conducts a phase 2 study of psilocybin to treat depression at UW-Madison and six other sites, including Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. An early phase, first-in-human study of a second, novel compound is planned for 2022.
The mask mandate could mark the first major change in UW-Madison’s fall plans. The university previously allowed vaccinated people to forgo a face covering, a policy that began in early June, but a concerning increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks that experts attribute to the delta variant of the coronavirus caused campus officials to reassess.
UW Health reassured parents that with the proper infection control processes in place, everyone should be able to have a safe school year.
Several health systems in Wisconsin are requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for employees but UW Health and UnityPoint Health-Meriter are not, even as the state’s largest doctor organization on Monday joined dozens of national health care groups in urging mandates for health care workers.
UW-Madison is considering a campuswide mask mandate and will announce its decision by the middle of this week, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said on Monday. The university is also weighing whether to expand testing requirements for unvaccinated members of the campus community.
Quoted: The CDC study “raises the very worrisome possibility that high viral loads can occur in people who have delta, and this is a fundamental as we have to approach the fall and winter,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Noted: Dr. Tiffany Green, who was not among the authors of the new research, told Medical News Today that the study aligns with separate research regarding patients who had undergone a cesarean birth.
Dr. Green, of the departments of population health sciences and obstetrics & gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is senior author of a study that was presented at the 2020 Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine Conference.
Dr. Green and her team found that, “Black patients reported higher average levels of pain compared to white patients, but still received similar amounts of pain medication.” Controlling for reported pain scores, explained Dr. Green, they received less pain medication than their white counterparts. This was also true of Asian patients.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will require all students, employees and visitors to wear masks when gathering indoors beginning next week, in line with new masking guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the Milwaukee Health Department.
The university will also require weekly COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated faculty, staff and students who are not 100% online.
Noted: At University of Wisconsin System schools, institutions have not put in place a mask or vaccine mandate, but are encouraging students to get vaccinated. This fall, UW-Madison will allow students who are vaccinated to not follow weekly COVID-19 testing requirements.
Private institutions like Marquette University and Beloit College will require vaccines.
UW Health increased its home-based care efforts this past year to accommodate patients who were not able to go to outpatient clinics for their care due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to UW Health.
Written by Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin and the author of Shape and How Not to Be Wrong.
Noted: At the University of Wisconsin, administrators are acknowledging the mental health difficulties of the pandemic year by urging first- and second-year students to establish healthy coping mechanisms and participate in a 30-day meditation challenge through the Healthy Minds Innovations app (which does not connect students with therapists).
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will require all students, employees and visitors to wear masks when gathering indoors beginning next week, in line with new masking guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the Milwaukee Health Department.
The university will also require weekly COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated faculty, staff and students who are not 100% online.
Co-sponsors and proponents of the bill spoke Thursday during an Assembly Committee on Health public hearing to urge lawmakers to join the more than one dozen other states in the country that require hospitals to get written and verbal consent from patients before pelvic exams are done under anesthesia for the educational benefit of medical students. Currently, some hospitals rely on general consent forms that don’t specify procedures done for training.
UW Health adopted a policy in 2019 requiring informed consent for “educational sensitive exams.” Previously, UW Health — like most teaching hospitals — received general consent from patients to allow medical students to train during their procedures, but did not specifically mention pelvic exams. The policy is up for review in 2022.
While Madison’s students are preparing for the fall semester, the Delta coronavirus variant is complicating plans for the upcoming school year. According to local public health officials, Delta is now the dominant coronavirus strain in Dane County.
For more on what the Delta surge means for local students, our Producer Jonah Chester spoke with Dr. Gregory DeMuri, a professor of pediatrics at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “Breakthrough infections started out at a very low rate. But now with the delta variant and the higher ease of transmissibility, those breakthrough infections are growing,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, director of infection control at UW Hospital and Clinics and faculty at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “So, the mask then will be this extra layer of protection in addition to the vaccine. Of course, it’s crucial for unvaccinated people (to mask up) because they don’t have that layer of protection from the vaccine.”
Quoted: The CDC based their recommendation on new evidence about the delta variant. Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said he would classify the latest science as “a bit of a game-changer.”
“We didn’t know this was going to be the case until we discovered that people who are vaccinated and get a breakthrough infection can potentially spread that to other people and that wasn’t the case before delta,” Sethi said.
Quoted: Public health officials do not know how long the immune system protects itself after an infection with COVID-19 and encourage all eligible people to get the vaccine.
“The duration of that protection is unknown,” said Ajay Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. “The science is already showing that people who have had the vaccine have better responses to the (delta) variant than people who had past infection.”
#28 is known for turning things around for Wisconsin on the football field. Now, UW Health hopes having Montee Ball on its team will be a gamechanger in helping the state of Wisconsin improve its vaccination rate, specifically within the black community.
UW Health and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center are offering COVID-19 vaccines with the opportunity to meet former badger and NFL running back Montee Ball.
Quoted: “The virus multiplies exponentially so 10 today could be 100 tomorrow,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, director of infection control at UW Hospital and Clinics and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Safdar urged people to take precautions like mask wearing and getting vaccinated.
“All around us, we are surrounded by high transmission, and it’s just a matter of time before we are right in there with the rest of the country,” she said.
Quoted: “If that indeed means that vaccinated people can become a source of transmission, though not the majority of transmission, mask use is a good idea,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Doctors and researchers who share Ciappa’s hope are worried about how much progress the movement lost during the last year and a half. “It took time to get those family-centered policies into the fabric of hospitals,” said Traci Snedden, a career critical care nurse and assistant professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Will Covid give clinicians permission to pull back again, or will it propel us forward like, ‘I can’t believe we went without family at the bedside’?”
Noted: Hansfield hopes he can ward off a gap in services for the Waupun area by participating in a first-of-its-kind program out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — one that places OB-GYN medical school residents at rural hospitals.
The program graduated its first resident in June. If it’s successful, it would send a slow but steady pipeline of doctors into Wisconsin’s rural hospitals, so women don’t have to go extra miles for care, and potentially risk their health or their baby’s health along the way.
Dane County is seeing an increase in the number of people infected with COVID-19 but is considered at a “moderate” community transmission level. Janel Heinrich, Public Health director, attributed the increase to the more contagious Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain in Wisconsin.
For the 10th year in a row, University of Wisconsin Hospitals, which includes University Hospital and UW Health at The American Center, has been ranked the best in Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin hospitals were ranked best in the state Tuesday for the tenth consecutive year, according to a new report.
Quoted: “It is as simple as if we’re all vaccinated, hanging out together in large groups, however large you want, that becomes a safe thing to do,” said Dr. Pothoff, an emergency medicine doctor at UW Health.
Quoted: “It’s almost like a personal tourniquet system. So you have a cuff that’s applied to your arm or leg that significantly reduces blood flow,” Marc Sherry, a physical therapist and manager of the UW Health Sports Rehabilitation Department in Madison, Wisconsin, told TODAY. “The basic premise is that it’s inflated to a pressure that prevents the blood from coming out of your arm but doesn’t prevent the blood from going into your arm.”
Noted: Another, and probably underestimated, factor may be the weather. Mississippi summers usually see average temperatures rise above 80℉ (26.7℃), a threshold at which the likelihood of violence in prisons increases.
That is the finding of a working paper by Anita Mukherjee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nicholas Sanders of Cornell University. The authors matched county-level weather variations across Mississippi with violent incidents reported in the state’s 36 prisons and jails between 2004 and 2010. Using these data, they built a statistical model that controlled for the time of year that the violence took place, the type of institution and other factors. They calculated that on days with average temperatures of 80℉ or higher the chances of violence increased by 20%. The hot weather leads to an average of 44 additional incidents of severe violence—those that result in serious injury or death—each year,
UW-Madison officials said the campus is disqualified from the ’70 for 70’ campaign since its campus community is expected to have a vaccination rate at or higher than 80% this fall.
The University of Wisconsin football team is over 85% vaccinated from COVID-19, according to coach Paul Chryst. Speaking with local reporters Friday at the Big Ten Conference football media days, Chryst said there was an instant surge of vaccination among his players once shots were available, and their total has climbed over 85% over the summer.
Abbie Esterline, a fifth-year student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, found herself missing fewer classes during the pandemic.
She has several chronic illnesses, such as gastroparesis and fibromyalgia, that can make it difficult to go in person to a classroom.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison plan to meld computer modeling and social science in hopes of providing better responses to future pandemics. The goal is to be ready with quicker and more equitable strategies to distribute vaccines.
Wisconsin weather forecasts for the next several days predict temperatures of 90 degrees Fahrenheit or more, and the public should take care when traveling or spending time outdoors, according to Rishelle Eithun, manager, Child Health Advocacy Program, UW Health.
Worries are rising among some UW-Madison employees as the school year approaches, the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps across unvaccinated pockets of the U.S. and university leaders plan to reopen without a mask mandate or vaccine requirement.
Noted: Dr. Luke Funk is an associate professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Srividya Kidambi is an associate professor and chief in the Division of Endocrinology and Molecular Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin/Froedtert Hospital. Dr. Christopher Weber is an obesity medicine specialist practicing in Milwaukee.
