Here & Now

Health Services Release Criteria, Progress Needed to Reopen

Frederica Freyberg:

As debate rages on how and when to reopen Wisconsin for business, the state is nearing 10,000 cases and 400 COVID-19 deaths. Andrea Palm oversees Wisconsin’s health care response to the pandemic. Secretary-designee Palm, thank you for joining us on this.

Andrea Palm:

Thanks for having me back.

Frederica Freyberg:

So your health department released its gating criteria in the form of a dashboard this week to show progress on areas needed, according to the administration, to restart the state. According to that dashboard, of six measures, we’re good to go on just one, the downward projectory of flu-like symptoms. Where we still have not met this criteria to open, it includes a 14-day downward trajectory in positive cases and people reporting systems of COVID-19. Where do we stand on that at week’s end?

Andrea Palm:

So as we have expanded testing pretty dramatically, both our capacity and working to expand the number of tests we’re doing on a daily basis, we certainly are seeing this level off in a way that I think gives us some hope that we are certainly moving in the right direction. Our percentage yesterday was 5.7%, which is considerably lower than about the 10% we’ve been seeing as sort of a flat line. And so we are hopeful that as we ramp up testing and start to really understand the outbreak here in Wisconsin, that we will see the numbers going in the right direction. But it also speaks to our need to continue to stay safer at home.

Frederica Freyberg:

So on that 14-day downward trajectory, we have been on a day-by-day downward trajectory and what are we at now, about five or six days on that?

Andrea Palm:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s somewhere between five and seven, yeah, that we’re seeing some downward movement. So that’s good.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you spoke to ramping up testing, and I know the capacity right now is to test about 15,000 people a day. Where are we on actual number of tests that are being done?

Andrea Palm:

So we hit a high number yesterday, our highest ever, at over 5500 tests, and so that is — that speaks to our partnership with the National Guard, who have really helped drive a number of community testing sites around the state to help us understand prevalence, but up those numbers so that we’re really starting to reach our goals of testing for the state of Wisconsin and we’ll continue to do that in the coming weeks.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it still the case that potentially health care providers are not encouraging people under, you know, fairly recent guidance to go ahead and get a test?

Andrea Palm:

So I think we’re working hard. We just a couple of weeks ago, if you have symptoms, stay home, right? That was our message. And so this is a major shift, to encouraging people, even with the mildest of symptoms, to go and get tested. And so I think that’s some of why you’re seeing this lag in the number of tests we’re doing on a daily basis. But opening up access, being clear that the guidance is loosened, making these drive-through testing sites available, again, for easy access for people. We really do hope to see a ramping up of the number of tests we’re doing every day.

Frederica Freyberg:

Is it accurate that you are now testing everyone in long-term care facilities?

Andrea Palm:

So part of our strategy of this community testing, outbreak testing and long-term care testing are critical pieces of, again, helping us understand the epidemic here. One of the things we’ve talked about from the very beginning is the vulnerability of people who live in long-term care. They’re most susceptible to severe disease and death and spread in those facilities can happen quickly. So our desire to be partners with long-term care and test everyone in facilities across the state will help us find cases that had previously been undetected so we can react quickly and help protect the people who live there.

Frederica Freyberg:

If we are doing those kind of tests in long-term care facilities, what are the kinds of results you are seeing?

Andrea Palm:

We have begun to have conversations with long-term care, about 50 or 60 so far, and are continuing to work through the progression of our teams going out and doing that testing. We have, on an outbreak basis, done some testing in long-term care and have made that information public on our website. And so if there’s one case, either staff or resident in long-term care, we want — we previously had wanted to be there and do testing and help with that testing. And so far, we have had good partnerships and been able to do the work necessary in those long-term care facilities, but we want to do that more broadly and more strategically moving forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s the current status of outbreaks at meat-packing plants and latest case numbers connected to those outbreaks?

Andrea Palm:

So one of the pieces of transparency we have tried to add to the website is this, where are the outbreaks, what kinds of places are they and then to be helping with the testing and contact tracing around those. And so of the about 235 right now, some are in long-term care, some are in businesses. Meat-packing is one, but there are other types of businesses that are having outbreaks. You can see on a county by county basis where those are and what times of places we’re seeing those outbreaks and we think that’s important information for people.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your response to those who have said that you did not have the authority to extend the “Safer at Home” order and some who even want you fired over it?

Andrea Palm:

Throughout this pandemic, we have done at the Department of Health Services and with our partners across the statewide response, done what we felt was necessary to protect the people of Wisconsin, to protect our health and safety. And we’ve seen that “Safer at Home” is working. We are flattening the curve. We have saved lives. And we are taking the time that was given to us through “Safer at Home” to build up our testing capacity, our contact tracing capacity and our partnerships with local communities to help fight this virus on the ground moving forward. And so I think we feel very, very good about the fact that the strategies we have deployed have helped us do the things we need to do here in Wisconsin to protect the people of the state.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Secretary-designee Palm, thanks very much.

Andrea Palm:

Thank you.