On Monday, UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank answered questions about the spike on the campus of the state’s flagship university. Blank defended the decision to bring back students amid criticism that such outbreaks at colleges across the U.S. were inevitable.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank on Monday defended reopening the university this fall, even as criticism mounted, the Faculty Senate scrapped spring break and the number of reported COVID-19 cases on campus exceeded 2,000 infections.
Uncertainty can provoke a vicious cycle of anxiety, says Jack Nitschke, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Our brains help us get good at what we’re doing,” he says
It is not unusual for communications people within the CDC to be involved in an MMWR report before publication, said Dr. Patrick Remington, a member of the journal’s editorial board and a former CDC staffer.
That involvement, however, was previously restricted to officials within the agency who let political leaders know what was coming so they could be prepared with a communications strategy, said Remington, now associate dean for public health at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
With the coronavirus positive case count climbing in Dane County as a result of more UW-Madison students becoming infected, and with some dormitories, fraternities and sororities in quarantine, there’s also a spike in demand on campus for virus testing.
Visitor restrictions at Madison hospitals will go into effect Tuesday in an effort to curb community spread of COVID-19 following a significant increase in confirmed cases in Dane County, said UW Health, SSM Health and UnityPoint Health ‒ Meriter Friday.
UW Health honored local emergency personnel and all first responders on the 19th anniversary of Sept. 11.
More than half of sorority and fraternity houses near UW-Madison’s campus are now under quarantine for at least the next two weeks.
In response to spiking COVID-19 cases, the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to make classes virtual, restrict other in-person activities and quarantine students living in two residence halls, Sellery and Witte. The decision was made Wednesday and most restrictions will be in place until at least Sept. 25.
University of Wisconsin students gathered outside Gordon Dining Hall and Event Center to protest the university’s COVID-19 Smart Restart plan and demand racial justice on Saturday.
Students at UW-Madison, angry at the administration, made a symbolic gesture of the impact the restart to the school year has had: gravestones set in front of the dining hall that students in quarantine have to use.
In an interview with PBS Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank defended on Friday the decision to offer a mixture of in-person and online classes, saying the university is taking steps to address the campus’ record-breaking COVID-19 test numbers.
In the first two weeks since students began returning to campus, over 800 students and staff tested positive, making up 65 percent of Dane County’s positive cases. The steady increase peaked on Sept. 9, with a record-breaking 487 people testing positive in 24 hours.
Public health officials in Madison, one of communities that has seen a dramatic rise in case numbers, believe as many as 85 percent of recent cases are linked to University of Wisconsin-Madison. That campus is now temporarily suspending in-person learning for two weeks and having students in two dorms quarantine.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Wednesday night that all in-person classes will be paused through Sept. 25 due to a growing number of positive COVID-19 test results.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is directing all undergraduate students to restrict their movements for the next two weeks in an attempt to reverse the rise in Covid-19 cases.
Cases have spiked in Dane County as the University of Wisconsin-Madison resumes in-person instruction. On Thursday, the county reported 456 new cases of COVID-19, shattering the previous single-day record and accounting for nearly one-third of all new coronavirus cases reported statewide.
Dane County Executive Joe Parisi has asked the University of Wisconsin-Madison to consider sending undergraduate students who live in dorms home as COVID-19 continues to spread.
Citing rapidly rising COVID-19 cases including two straight days in which one in five student tests came back positive, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank locked down the state’s largest university campus for two weeks.
Students scrambled in and out of Witte Residence Hall on Wednesday night with their arms full of Ian’s Pizza boxes, panic-bought groceries and bags full of trash. One student entered the building announcing, “Goodbye, rain! Goodbye, fresh air!” as he prepared to enter two weeks of quarantine announced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison less than two hours earlier.
UW-Madison is moving all classes online and quarantining students in two of its largest dorms for at least the next two weeks, the most significant step by the university to curb a COVID-19 outbreak that has surpassed 1,000 infections in mere days.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is moving all classes online and quarantining students in two of its largest dorms as it deals with rising cases of COVID-19.
Alab at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center started manufacturing a new drug to treat COVID-19 patients, the university announced Wednesday.
The health system is actively working to improve recruitment and retention of employees of color, expanding DEI professional development and training programs and integrating tools into decision-making and operational processes that improve equity. UW Health is building upon existing community partnerships and increasing its investment into communities of color. UW Health also plans to support healthcare-related public policy that addresses systemic racism.
A relatively small number of UW-Madison students were tested for COVID-19 on Labor Day, but the percentage of those tests that were positive saw a significant jump.
A spokesperson for the university said in an email that data showed that the spread is due to social interactions, not academic interactions.
At least 71 percent of the 901 people in the county who tested positive were UW students or members of its staff, Public Health Madison & Dane Co. reports. The agency’s numbers come a day after the university directed its students to restrict their in-person interactions and limit their movements to essential actions for the next two weeks.
One day after the University of Wisconsin-Madison said COVID-19 spread was on the verge of jeopardizing plans for in-person instruction, the state’s top Republicans sent a letter to Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren asking that he reconsider the cancellation of the fall 2020 college football season.
Sunday marked the highest number of cases for both Dane County and University of Wisconsin-Madison on-campus testing since the pandemic started in March, breaking the previous record set only one day prior on Saturday.
UW-Madison ordered students who live in nine fraternity and sorority houses to quarantine for two weeks after more than three dozen members recently tested positive for COVID-19.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank on Monday ordered undergraduate students to restrict their movements for 14 days to curb the spread of COVID-19 on campus as cases continue to rise.
“People of color are a vital population to making this study a success,” said Shiva Bidar, vice president and chief diversity officer at UW Health.
As UW Health and the UW School of Medicine roll out a Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial, they’re asking people of all backgrounds to participate.
UW Health is working with churches, nonprofits and community organizations to ensure Black and African American, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous populations are informed about the opportunity to participate in the trial.
“It was very empowering and I feel like we were a really good mix that day,” said Dr. Cynthia Griffin, a Med Flight physician.
UW Health’s Chief Diversity Officer Shiva Bidar-Sielaff says a diverse group of participants will give researchers a better understanding of how the vaccine works for everyone and the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has set aside such housing for sick students to keep them in Madison. “The concern about sending all these college kids back home is that we potentially increase transmission in many communities,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, an emergency medicine physician who is the university’s chief quality officer.
UW Health and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is starting to vaccinate the first participants in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 clinical trial Wednesday.
First study participants to receive COVID-19 vaccine today at UW Health.
Over the next eight weeks, 1,600 people will take part in the study at University Hospital.
UW senior Courtney Degen said she was frustrated by the loss of those senses. Degen experienced a consistent sore throat, headaches and congestion, and reported feeling sick to the point she couldn’t get out of bed and needed frequent naps for a few days.
Noted: Birx was in Madison to talk to Wisconsin officials and health care representatives about COVID-19 as part of a tour of states. Among those she met with was Tommy Thompson, the University of Wisconsin System president whom she knows from his time as health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush.
“I think he has taken a very serious and public-health approach to this,” Birx said. “He has a plan for surveillance testing, he has a plan for surge testing … and I think equally importantly, he has a plan for caring for students who become positive.”
She suggested that could help UW avoid the problems of colleges that have seen clusters of cases once students arrived on campus.
As students return to campus for the fall semester, colleges are taking measures to protect students, physically as well as mentally, from the pandemic and its effects.
Quoted: “It is hard to find these causal relationships,” said Nasia Safdar, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
How are people going to figure out how students are doing in school this year?
“I can’t imagine how this isn’t going to be the most challenging year that we’ve ever had for answering that question,” said Brad Carl, an expert on the subject who is with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How are we going to tell?”
A crucial Phase III clinical trial of a vaccine against COVID-19 begins this week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and its teaching hospital UW Health.
“Comorbidities” reported by the CDC include heart disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension — conditions that can make a person more vulnerable to the virus. Each would be listed on a person’s death certificate, along with covid-19. Death certificates may also list sepsis, respiratory arrest, kidney failure or other conditions as the immediate cause of death, but those are caused by the infection. The virus remains the reason that they died, said Nasia Safdar, an infectious-disease professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Her comments come just days before University of Wisconsin campuses are scheduled to resume in-person classes after sending students home in the spring to complete their semesters virtually.
The University of Wisconsin is one of dozens of test sites in the U.S. for the vaccine candidate, made by AstraZeneca in partnership with the U.K.’s University of Oxford. Tuesday’s trial will mark the start of the third phase 3 trial in the U.S. for a COVID-19 vaccine, following Moderna and Pfizer.
The coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx talked up the value of masks during a visit on Monday to Wisconsin and praised the University of Wisconsin system’s plans for protecting students.
UW Hospital plans to enroll 1,600 people in a study of one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, research that will evaluate the effectiveness of the injection before it can be submitted for approval and potentially used to tame the pandemic.
Fraternities and sororities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have committed to a no alcohol policy for the fall semester, in addition to previously released health and safety guidelines for student groups.
Quoted: The idea of using azithromycin for COVID-19 was based on preliminary French research suggesting a benefit that later was found to be flawed, said Ann Misch, an assistant professor of infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Separately, laboratory research showed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin reduced viral replication of cells infected by the virus, though not azithromycin alone. But, she said, “there’s a huge chasm between an effect in cell culture and in humans.”
She said there is no evidence azithromycin is effective against COVID-19.
“If people are using azithromycin, I am sorry to hear that,” she said.
About 1% of COVID-19 tests administered by UW-Madison over the past three weeks came back positive, according to a new data dashboard that launched Wednesday.
UW Health’s Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof talks about coronavirus prevention measures on college campuses.
“As another step in our antiracist journey, I have elevated the role of our Chief Diversity Officer to an executive-level position. Elevating this position to the vice president level acknowledges the importance as well as the foundational nature of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at UW Health,” Dr. Alan S. Kaplan, CEO of UW Health.
The heads of the University of Wisconsin System, the Tavern League of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Restaurant Association sent an open letter to restaurant and bar owners Monday asking they take precautions to prevent COVID-19 spread as students start to return to campuses across the state.
UW System Interim President Tommy Thompson asked businesses to “help to encourage responsible behavior of our students,” alongside on-campus efforts to bring back a portion of some 170,000 students across 13 UW campuses.
Flu is circulating in the Southern Hemisphere and even with limited travel, there are cases on the seasonal flu in Wisconsin already, Conway said during a press conference at the Alliant Energy Center along with health officials from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UnitiyPoint Health-Meriter, SSM Health and Public Health Madison & Dane County.
The findings match what has been observed on a smaller scale in other studies, said Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Superspreading events, which provide the virus with huge numbers of hosts in a small amount of time, are driving the global outbreak. Delays in returning test results make it much more difficult to mitigate their effects; by the time those infected in such events know they’re sick, they have probably infected many more people
“We’re terrified of the possibility of a ‘twindemic,’” said Dr. James Conway, medical director of UW Health’s immunization program. “If we did get a particularly bad flu season and COVID-19 continues to have these surges, both the health systems and the communities would really be in great stress.”
