Wisconsin doesn’t have the capacity to process the number of coronavirus tests health officials ideally want available when schools and college campuses reopen, Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm said Friday.
Other factors linked to low IQ could also contribute to the disparity, including lead poisoning and quality of nursery schools, says Maureen Durkin, professor of public health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the research. Some families have reported difficulty getting therapists to visit their homes if they live in a neighborhood perceived as “dangerous,” she says.
Health care workers, older adults, people with serious medical conditions and minorities are among groups that might get COVID-19 vaccines first if supply is limited, as federal and state committees rush to set priorities before vaccines become available.
The traditional white coat ceremony, usually a graduation-like celebration following the first week of classes, was virtual this year. On Friday, the ceremony was streamed on the school’s Facebook page to welcome this year’s incoming class of 176 students – the first to start their training during the pandemic.
“I can see it being very difficult to implement, especially with off-campus gatherings,” student Julian Nazareth told WISN. “It’s just really hard to enforce.”
On Friday afternoon, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health welcomed students for their White Coat Ceremony virtually, as this class will be the first to start their journey during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event, typically held with friends and family in-person, signifies students’ entry into the profession.
John Eason, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist who studies the effect of prisons on rural communities, argued that “it doesn’t matter who it is” that’s getting worse-hit by Covid-19 behind bars, given how many Black individuals are incarcerated. “If we don’t find a way to decarcerate, Black people are going to lose.”
But such tests face regulatory hurdles before they can be produced widely. Other rapid tests that are available now may need to be refined further before they can be “operationalized,” or used effectively in an actual setting, like a school, according to Dave O’Connor. He and colleagues in the AIDS Vaccine Reseach Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have been piloting what is called a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) test, which can be done on saliva, as part of the N.I.H. Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative. They’re running their project out of a minivan. “The first day we tested five or six people,” he told me. “Today we ran 80.”
Written by Robert N. Golden, MD, is dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Joseph E. Kerschner, MD is dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
App includes focuses on healing physically, coping mentally with virus.
For most of April, Marylu Seidel felt like she was starring in a science fiction movie. Her husband of 34 years, Jeff, was sedated in an intensive care unit more than an hour’s drive away in Madison, Wis., and her only window into his world was a daily phone call with his nurses. His doctors, first at a local community hospital and then at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, tried everything to help Jeff defeat the novel coronavirus — a ventilator, an antibiotic, an antimalarial drug, blood thinners, a blood plasma transfusion.
Noted: University of Wisconsin researchers have been testing volunteers this summer with a saliva test.
UW athletic director Barry Alvarez, speaking to reporters during a Zoom session last week, acknowledged the current inability to secure rapid test results played a role in the Big Ten’s decision to shut down fall sports in 2020.
Quoted: But raw numbers don’t always tell the whole story, said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, a rise in cases can also be due to a rise in testing.
“If you think about something too simplistically, you can fall into the trap of believing something that is partially or maybe not even true at all,” Sethi said.
In a shaded parking lot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, so-called spit concierges guide volunteers though giving a saliva sample. On the other side of the parking lot is a pared-down biology lab where scientists test the spit-filled plastic vials for the virus that causes COVID-19.
They’ll have the results within one or two hours.
The scene looked like it always does this time of year when tens of thousands of UW-Madison students’ off-campus leases turn over.
Quoted: “Experiencing symptoms of hypervigilance, stress or distress are signals to discontinue your journaling exercise,” University of Wisconsin psychologist Shilagh A. Mirgain told UW Health.
Over the past two weeks, Wisconsin universities have revealed more information about their plans for COVID-19 testing.
Colleges and universities across Wisconsin have developed a patchwork of plans to prepare for what at its core is an unknown: How to reopen campuses safely during a pandemic.
Quoted: Testing students every week or two will provide a gauge of whether the virus is taking hold on campuses. Many physicians stress this so-called surveillance testing is the only way to identify students and staff who are infected but don’t have symptoms.
“I don’t see how one can not do it,” said Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease physician at UW Health.
Sixteen gallons of hand sanitizer sat in the foyer of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority house at the University of Wisconsin as house mother Karen Mullis reconfigured tables in the dining room to maintain social distancing.
There was no Massillon/McKinley game in 1918. The game was cancelled because of the Spanish Flu pandemic. How did the pandemic affect pro sports at the time? Dr. Susan Lederer, Professor of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined Jon to provide some insight.
Noted: It’s worth noting that another experiment, from a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, actually found that gaiters were the most effective mask in containing a cough, though those gaiters were slightly different, containing elastic.
Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said that while case numbers in some rural parts of Wisconsin may be far lower than in cities such as Milwaukee, rates of infection in some rural counties are now higher.
With coronavirus cases still high around the country, half of U.S. elementary and high school students will attend school only virtually this fall, according to a study by Burbio, which aggregates school and community information nationwide.
That will have grave implications for minority and disadvantaged students, said Madeline Hafner, executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network Consortium at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
The past five or six months have “really brought to light these racial disparities that have persisted for generations,” she said.
“With great uncertainty about the new school year, wealthier, predominantly White parents are using their resources to secure educational options for their individual children,” Erica Turner, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in her “Equity in Pandemic Schooling” action guide.
Quoted: Despite avoiding the worst-case scenarios predicted when the pandemic first hit, the number of deaths is still troubling, said University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Patrick Remington.
“It’s been hard to get the general public and even some policymakers to realize how serious a disease this is,” Remington said. “These are absolutely preventable deaths.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s first on-campus COVID-19 testing location is now operating on an appointment basis, with at least two more sites expected to open for the fall semester.
Noted: While it may seem wise to separate your disposable face mask from your other garbage, Nasia Safdar, M.D., Ph.D., and professor of infectious disease at the University of Wisconsin, notes that it actually isn’t required. “The virus does not survive for prolonged periods outside the body,” she says. “Persons handling garbage must wear gloves when handling any trash, and that will protect against this [virus], as well.”
Noted: A recent study by the University of Wisconsin found the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a “significant toll on the mental health and well-being” of student-athletes.
Quoted: But as the outbreak drags on, and we’ve become more conscious of germs and hygiene, “some of the changes we made are likely to be really durable,” said Malia Jones, who researches social environments and infectious disease exposure at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This spring when the pandemic began, UW began looking into the correlation between canceling sports and mental health in student-athletes. Researchers surveyed 3,000 student-athletes from around Wisconsin and found that , 65% recorded symptoms of anxiety, with 40% being mild and about 13% severe, while around 12% were moderate.
Quoted: Christopher Coe, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he describes himself as being fairly tolerant of risk, with one caveat. That he has a sense of control and predictability about that risk.
With an invisible virus, he said the risk is a lot harder to gauge, especially when he knows there are also a lot of people who are not behaving in the right way.
“I am not afraid of pathogens per se. I do research with infectious agents,” Coe said. “But when I do, I wear the appropriate protective personal equipment. I handle the specimens in biosafety cabinets. I sanitize contaminated surfaces, etc. That is, the risk is tempered by a logical series of steps to lessen and control.”
Aside from the campuses in Eau Claire, Green Bay and Platteville, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and University of Wisconsin-Madison have introduced required pledges for students too.
Add this to the litany of bad news about the coronavirus pandemic: Opioid overdoses are up, likely because of stress. And La Crosse County may have seen the nation’s first verified reinfection of a person who previously was diagnosed with COVID-19. On the positive side, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are testing a COVID-19 saliva test that could provide results in just a few hours, allowing schools and workplaces to reopen.
The location is on Henry Mall, between University Avenue and Linden Drive.Testing is by appointment only.
But during the early months of the pandemic, the disagreements — what one critical-care doctor called, on his well-read blog, the profession’s “intellectual food fight” — provided another layer of painful stress to some doctors already near their limits. “It became like Republicans and Democrats,” said Pierre Kory, a critical-care doctor who faced that tension himself at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. “The two sides can’t talk to each other.”
UW Health is looking into new ways to help protect frontline health care workers from COVID-19.
UW Health says it performed more heart transplants during the pandemic, which the hospital says defies the national trend.
“We’re being much more vigilant about sanitization and as a result, there’s a lot more of these supplies for people or kids to get into inadvertently. We’ve had some very bad advice from out national leadership. There are people who are doing things that may have been said in jest that they don’t realize, because of who it’s coming from,” says Ed Elder, director of the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If anyone in Wisconsin was poised to play a part in the coronavirus pandemic, it was Jonathan Temte. A physician and associate dean with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Temte is also an expert in vaccine and immunization policy who sat on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for eight years and is currently a member of the ACIP COVID-19 Vaccine Work Group, a panel that will help inform the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determine how a COVID-19 vaccine will be deployed.
Patients at UW Hospital and Clinics can get free wigs again, after the coronavirus halted the service for several months.
Research on the effectiveness of wearing face masks is limited, but the idea is that wearing a mask helps reduce the transmission of the virus from the wearer to people in proximity through talking, coughing or sneezing. Dr. James Conway, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said cloth masks can achieve that quite well.
William Hartman, a doctor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is treating hospitalized Covid-19 patients with convalescent plasma, said FDA emergency-use authorization may prompt more hospitals to give the treatment earlier.
One committee member, Paul Hunter, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, offered this summary: “If I was looking at the data correctly, if you’re a middle-aged-to-older African American female medical assistant with diabetes and hypertension, it looks to me like you’re on top of the list to get the vaccine.”
It will take coordinated effort from national, state, and local leadership, individual behavior change, and funding to bring the outbreak under control and to return to in-person schooling safely. Measuring exactly 6 feet in between desks will not be enough to achieve these aims; we need to think about the big picture and consider how each reopening plan stacks up against these goals.
For the ninth year in a row, University of Wisconsin Hospitals, including University Hospital and UW Health at the American Center, have been ranked #1 by U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals.”
Researchers at UW are trying to figure out if certain antiseptic solutions can help protect frontline workers from contracting COVID-19.
“I’ve had a couple patients recently who have dealt with delayed diagnosis because how things have played out during the pandemic,” said Madison family physician Dr. Jeff Huebner. “They had health insurance but it was an example of delayed diagnosis for, in both cases, cancer because people aren’t coming in.” Huebner, who is also a clinical assistant professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine, said doctors are especially worried about what will happen in the coming months.
Quoted: “We know that voter registration numbers have been lower this spring and summer than they would normally be in a presidential election year,” said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.
So this means some travelers will slip through the net. Skipping quarantine yet out in the community. Even if rapid (less accurate) tests miss some infected people, they can still have a significant impact on transmission says Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dave O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said tests can miss lots of people with low levels of the virus and yet have a profound impact on transmission.
Ajay Sethi, faculty director of the master of public health program and associate professor of population health sciences says the public and patients need to be thoughtful and careful when absorbing information about the coronavirus.
Ajay Sethi, Faculty Director of the Master of Public Health program at the UW SMPH says there’s a lot of false messages being circulated around COVID-19.
A UW Health employee is questioning a dress code policy, saying its implementation should be reexamined.
UW Health is reopening a salon that provides services to its cancer patients.
Noted: One approach focuses on improving teachers’ own mental health. Matthew Hirschberg and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that randomly assigning a group of aspiring teachers to a preservice course on mindfulness reduced those teachers’ implicit bias and fostered their provision of emotional, instructional, and organizational support to students. The 22-hour course emphasized kindness, compassion, and managing one’s emotions. Another mindfulness program, CARE for Teachers, saw similar results.
Noted: Madison365 spoke with three local experts: Public Health Madison Dane County data analyst Brittany Grogan, University of Wisconsin infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Ajay Sethi, and Dr. Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin.
Many businesses are open. Mask orders have been implemented as cases are trending up. We are tracking the numbers, but many of you have questions about how we can protect ourselves and others. What can we do to slow the transmission of COVID-19?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has assembled a panel of experts from the University of Wisconsin’s Madison and Milwaukee campuses. They will periodically answer questions from readers.
Quoted: “I don’t think (the finding) was surprising, but it was good to see data that actually described it,” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control and prevention at UW Health in Madison.
Noted: Other staples of everyday life, especially the resumption of school, may differ widely in cities and towns across the country. Without data to measure the effect of different educational methods on the spread of the virus, the U.S. will soon embark on what amounts to “uncontrolled experiments,” said Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
UW virologist and influenza expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka said that although he is confident COVID-19 will become endemic, he believes the lifestyle changes people have made should not become permanent.
“Once everyone gets vaccinated we should be able to go back to normal life,” he said, predicting that day might come “in three years, maybe four years.”
UW Health officials say they are ready to meet health care needs of the community if there is a potential surge of COVID-19 cases.
UW Health doctors say choosing not to wear a mask increases a person’s degree of exposure to the virus.
