Rodgers and other UW-Madison engineers teamed up with Madison design firm Delve to develop an easy way to create face shields, one of the pieces of PPE used by healthcare workers.
“As COVID-19 spreads in our community, we know our physicians, providers and staff may be exposed and contract the virus, either through workplace interactions or providing care.” UW Health’s Emily Kumlien said.
The years of studying and sleepless nights for the 2020 class of UW-Madison medical students culminated in a sanitizer-slathered celebration through computer screens.
UW Health will temporary consolidate its primary care clinics to 10 designated locations during the COVID-19 outbreak.
UW Hospital and the American Center will begin restricting visitors guidelines starting at 3 p.m. Saturday in response to the spread of COVID-19.
In his UW-Madison lab, Adel Talaat developed an experimental vaccine to protect chickens from coronavirus. When the pandemic of a different strain arose in people late last year, Talaat used his technique to create a vaccine candidate for humans.
Quoted: “It is a fundamental principle of outbreak control to slow transmission,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
“Our goal is to keep all patients on active cancer treatments on their treatment and on schedule. To date, we’ve been able to do that. We’ve had enough for providers to do that and that’s really our plan going forward.”
Coronavirus is something kids are likely to be asking about a lot. When it comes up, Travis Wright, an associate professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he recommends allowing the kids’ questions and concerns to guide the conversation. That way, you won’t inadvertently introduce fears that they didn’t already have.
Also quoted: “They can take over-the-counter medications and they will do just fine,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer for UW Health. “I know people are worried about our kids. If we’ve got anything going for us, it doesn’t appear that COVID makes children too sick.”
UW-Madison residence halls may transform into emergency overflow rooms if area hospitals fill beyond capacity because of COVID-19 cases, according to the university’s student housing director.
Quoted: Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Watch compiled your questions and sought answers from Dr. Dawn Davis. She is director of the Comprehensive Diabetes Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and section chief for Endocrinology at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison.
Quoted: “Looking at health in older adults with autism can tell us something about the result of a lifetime of the lived experience of being autistic, of the discrimination that comes with being autistic,” says Lauren Bishop, assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
UW-Madison announced Tuesday that instruction and exams would remain online through the end of the spring semester, another aggressive step by Wisconsin’s largest university to stem the spread of COVID-19.
UW Health, SSM Health and UnityPoint Health-Meriter said they are reaching out to patients to postpone many non-urgent surgeries and procedures.
As University of Wisconsin-Madison students left town for spring break last week, they expected to be gone for a bit longer than usual to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But on Tuesday, they were forced to quickly come to terms with a new announcement: there will be no more in-person instruction this spring.
Hospital staff are still urging patients to call ahead.
Fitness centers are taking steps to combat the spread of coronavirus, but a UW Health doctor says that, for now, it’s safer to exercise outdoors or away from other people.
The virus isn’t found in sweat, so that’s not the problem. However, if someone in a gym has COVID-19, they could spread it through coughing, sneezing or touching a workout machine.
“There are so many surfaces they could contaminate,” said Jeff Pothof, safety officer for UW Health, which is an affiliate of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Quoted: “We’re saying that social distancing is the only thing that we know of that has the potential to blunt the curve of this pandemic,” says Nasia Safdar, the medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted state laws do not explicitly say the governor can suspend most laws during health emergencies but also do not expressly prohibit doing so.
“This seems to be a gray area that is not spelled out fully in state law,” he said by email.
With hundreds of coronavirus test specimens now coming in daily to UW-Madison’s Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, the lab stayed open over the weekend and has more than tripled its capacity.
Quoted: “We’re currently in a worrisome situation because this is a disease for which people do not have natural immunity from past exposure, and there’s currently no vaccine and no treatment,” said Vicki Bier, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in risk analysis for homeland security.
Ajay K. Sethi, associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, expressed support for the development of monoclonal antibodies.
City, county, school and University of Wisconsin Hospital officials held a press conference at the Madison Municipal Building on Sunday where they announced additional measures designed to control the pandemic at the local level.
UW-Health is evaluating patient care appointments and procedures to determine which ones can be safely postponed, UW-Health spokesperson Emily Kumlien said in a statement Saturday.
We are looking for stories about how the changes are affecting you and want to hear what questions you still have. We also want to hear stories about how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting you.
“The things I said in it are really basic public health hygiene strategies,” Jones, who is an assistant scientist at UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory. “What we can do is wash our hands and don’t touch your face. Actually, I said, Don’t pick your nose. I’ve been joking a lot that I’m the person who told America not to pick its nose.”
Organizers of the 2020 Wisconsin Film Festival, set to begin April 2, canceled the event out of concern for public safety in the face of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.
UW-Madison announced Friday that a School of Veterinary Medicine employee tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The all-out effort to contain COVID-19 or minimize its consequences is something that hasn’t been seen since the “Spanish” flu pandemic in 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million people, including 675,000 in the U.S., said Richard Keller, a UW-Madison professor of the history of medicine.
We are infectious disease specialists at UW-Madison — one an epidemiologist and mother of two boys at Van Hise Elementary School, the other a global health pediatric infectious diseases physician. Out of concern for the safety of our community during this critical moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, we ask all parents (who have the means to do so) to please voluntarily keep your children home from school, starting on Monday.
Action taken in the months since the rejection of the UHS budget has included everything from the creation of a Mental Health Task Force, expanded hours of operation on certain days and the hiring of 13 new counselors.
Even with over 100 colleges and universities nationwide — and counting — suspending in-person classes to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many students were taken aback when the University of Wisconsin-Madison made the big announcement Wednesday.
But there will be no postseason for the red-hot Badgers, whose 2019-20 campaign ended abruptly Thursday when the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments were canceled due to concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
At UW-Madison, which has about 20,000 employees, workers can start asking their supervisors for permission to work from home, spokesman John Lucas said. Previously, employees had to use a more centralized system to request to work remotely.
Sports in general are on hold or in question across the U.S. as pro, college and high school leagues try to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Red carts rolled in and out of residence halls. Students stuck without suitcases lugged trash bags of belongings out to cars. Desk receptionists collected students’ keys, a requirement in the move-out process.
UW Health on Thursday started canceling some non-essential clinic appointments because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and leaders said UW Hospital is already near capacity in part because of a serious flu season.
UW-Madison’s School of Nursing will host the second annual LGBTQ+ Health Summit on campus Friday, April 17.
Dr. Robert Golden, chairman of the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority Board, sat in front of a sea of fed-up nurses as he tried to wrap up an agenda item at a monthly board meeting in Madison.
Multiple Wisconsin universities on Wednesday took dramatic steps to ward off or curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, everything from moving courses online to canceling university-sponsored travel and events to extending spring break.
Multiple Wisconsin universities on Wednesday took dramatic steps to ward off or curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, everything from moving courses online to canceling university-sponsored travel and events to extending spring break.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health, said if hospitals share masks and equipment and add more isolation rooms, “I think that we could manage” the outbreak.
As students face mental health disorders, therapy animals, emotional support animals provide relief.
The Feb. 27 board meeting was the third in a row in which UW Health nurses asked the board to recognize their new union — so far to no avail.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank “strongly advised” students and employees Monday to reconsider non-essential personal and business travel away from Dane County. The guidance comes a week before the start of the university’s spring break.
Two commercial labs, Quest and LabCorp, will supplement testing being done at the State Laboratory of Hygiene on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and the Milwaukee Health Department. The state lab can do 100 tests per day and the Milwaukee lab up to 30. It’s not known yet how many additional tests will be done through the commercial labs.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank issued an advisory Monday recommending that students and staff “reconsider non-essential personal or business travel away from Dane County” during the university’s Spring Break, from March 14-22.
“This is just human psychology. We get scared of things we don’t know,” Dominique Brossard, UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communications Chair and Professor said.
Dr. Jeff Pothof is a UW Health Chief Quality and Safety Officer who is breaking down the facts and myths of coronavirus.
The university advised students, staff and faculty to reconsider “non-essential personal or business travel away from Dane County,” as “documented cases are growing rapidly both domestically and internationally.”
Carol Ryff, director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who developed the scales of wellbeing used to assess flourishing, called the study a “model of innovative health science for the future” and a “breath of fresh air.”
Universities in the state, especially ones with large international student populations, were early to recognize and plan for the impact of COVID-19. As the outbreak spread internationally, it has affected students in study abroad programs, with some having to cancel their studies and return home. Meanwhile, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, scientists are commencing research on the virus in collaboration with the state hygiene lab and other researchers elsewhere.
Up to 100 tests a day can be done at the State Hygiene Lab on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, said Dr. Allen Bateman, assistant director of the Communicable Disease Division at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene.
CEO Judy Faulkner urged customers to support a letter in opposition. More than 60 health system CEOs, including those at UW Health, UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Gundersen Health System, signed the letter sent in February to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.
The Wisconsin Laboratory of Hygiene at UW-Madison started testing for the virus Monday and can test about 100 samples a day, said Dr. Allen Bateman, assistant director of the lab’s communicable disease division. Previously, samples had to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
A $10 million, five-year effort at UW-Madison to curb obesity in Wisconsin, which ended in December, met a stark reality: The state’s obesity rate, which is slightly higher than the national average, continued to go up.
Before she died, Miriam became an advocate for the McPherson Eye Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with scientists Dave O’Connor and Tom Friedrich, who research viral infections at the University of Wisconsin. O’Connor and Friedrich formed a Slack channel on Jan. 22 to coordinate coronavirus research with scientists worldwide.
Quoted: People may be mistaken if they feel like a temporary drop in greenhouse gas emissions is good for the environment, Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told ABC News.
When pollution is released into the air, the particulates “actually have a shielding effect” from the sun, Dutton said.
“If you take that away, then it has the opposite effect,” and the planet could warm even faster, Dutton said.
Noted: Rutgers University, Kent State University, the University of San Diego, Penn State University, Kennesaw State University, Fairfield University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Connecticut and the University of Georgia all told NBC News that they will not have any students self-quarantined on campus in dorms or other university housing.
