Frederica Freyberg:
Four years ago this week, the state of Wisconsin declared a state of emergency because of COVID. The virus has taken more than 16,000 lives in Wisconsin, and while the threat has faded, the effects of the pandemic linger. “Here & Now” reporter Aditi Debnath spoke to state epidemiologist at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Dr. Jasmine Zapata to talk about lessons learned and current status. Her comments include discussion of suicide.

Aditi Debnath:
Where do we stand today in Wisconsin with COVID-19 infections?

Jasmine Zapata:
I can’t believe that it’s been four years. It seems like that time just went by so quickly. As it relates to Wisconsin, we’re actually seeing in our wastewater levels, our emergency department visits and our percent positivity that the rates are getting lower. So we are definitely in a better place than we were four years ago.

Aditi Debnath:
What should or could have public health providers done differently during the first few months of the pandemic?

Jasmine Zapata:
That’s such a great question and when you look back, of course, hindsight is 20/20 vision. We know things that could have been done differently. First, I would like to say, I’m really proud of the fact that we are still here, that we got through this. That was a very, very hard time. We’re still facing different complications and ripple effects from the pandemic, so we’re not completely done with this. But I’m just proud of the fact that we are standing. We are still here and that we learned a lot of important lessons. One of the biggest lessons that I truly believe that we learned, and when people ask what could we have done differently if we could go back, it’s really a question of if we could have gone back in time even before the pandemic started, continuing to build that trust between our community and healthcare and public health. When we as public health providers and as a public health system went into communities and talked about vaccines and this is a pandemic and everybody get vaccinated, here’s what to do to be safe, the fact that there were so many lives lost because of a distrust in the healthcare system, even because of lack of access, because of many different barriers, that’s heartbreaking. Those are some things that could have been prevented, but that was work that needed to be done years and even decades before the pandemic started. So I don’t think there’s any one thing that we could have done immediately at that time. The real work in prevention needed to start even years before the pandemic even occurred.

Aditi Debnath:
The pandemic also caused a lot of problems and pain for healthcare workers on the frontline. Some say the industry will never return back to normal. As a frontline worker and a community doctor, what are some of those problems that are still lingering in the healthcare field?

Jasmine Zapata:
There’s a lot of different issues, but one of them is burn-out. In the medical field, we have one of the highest rates of suicide, and that is something that’s very disturbing. I’ve personally had colleagues that I’ve gone out to dinner with, that I’ve talked with on the phone, had close relationships die from suicide, and that’s something that is hard to talk about, but unless we talk about it more, it’s never going to change. So it was already a bad problem, but especially due to the pandemic and just the way that the healthcare system was overwhelmed, that definitely had a long-term impact on the mental health of even providers.

Aditi Debnath:
Dr. Jasmine Zapata, thank you very much.

Jasmine Zapata:
Mm-hmm. Thank you.