Here & Now

UW Health’s Dr. Jeff Pothof Discusses COVID-19 Vaccine

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, one UW Health physician is so confident in the safety of an investigational vaccine for COVID-19 that he was first in line to participate in a new trial this week. Dr. Jeff Pothof is not connected to the study but he is the UW Health’s chief quality officer. The study, administered by UW Health and the UW School of Medicine, is open for enrollment. Investigators hope to vaccinate 1600 volunteers over the next eight weeks at University Hospital. Dr. Jeff Pothof joins us now and thanks very much for being here.

Jeff Pothof:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why did you decide to be the first in line to receive the vaccine in this trial here?

Jeff Pothof:

You know, the main reason is, is I think the majority of us are just really tired of this whole coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. We’re tired of how many people have been made sick. We’re tired of how many people have died. We’re tired of not being able to do a lot of the things that we want to do. Our kids aren’t going to school. We can’t see our sports teams play. And a safe and effective vaccine is going to be our most powerful tool to really close the book on this pandemic. I reviewed the safety profile of this vaccine. I’ve talked to the researchers. And for me, that tremendous benefit of getting us closer to normal far outweighed the small risk in this trial. That’s just something I wanted to be part of the solution.

Frederica Freyberg:

Did you have any aftereffects from it that you know of?

Jeff Pothof:

A bit of little tenderness over the injection site. Yesterday I had a mild headache so really hard to tell if so things would have just happened anyways or were they related to the injection but those are some of the things I experienced. Today I feel great.

Frederica Freyberg:

The president has said that he hopes and expects a vaccine will be available by early November. How realistic do you think that is?

Jeff Pothof:

You know, early November seems to be a little bit sooner than what I think we’ll be ready to have the data available. The only reason to approve a vaccine is if we know it’s safe and effective for hundreds of millions of people to get it. There’s no other reason or no other indication that we should be approving a vaccine before we know the answer to those two questions.

Frederica Freyberg:

With UW schools opening this week as well as K-12 schools, what concerns do you have that young people, again, who are among kind of the highest subset of people seeing positive COVID cases, can conform their behavior to limit the spread?

Jeff Pothof:

Yeah. As I look at these college reopening plans, the plans that they have on paper are really pretty okay, they’re pretty good. The concern that I have is it really — the bulk of the responsibility rests on those students, and as we’ve had more experiences with colleges opening, I’d say that our experience hasn’t been all that great. We’ve had a lot of college campuses report high levels of COVID-19 transmission through activities that aren’t necessarily happening during the school day, but when the school day is over. So if we continue to see that trend, I think what you’ll find is high levels of COVID-19 transmitting between that age demographic. College campuses potentially having to think about shutting down. And then we’re left with the issue of do we need to then cohort those students on campus in the city they’re in so they don’t go back to their communities across the United States and increase the COVID-19 transmissibility across the country.

Frederica Freyberg:

So specifically, when you see numbers reaching into the hundreds at UW campuses, with the most at UW-Madison with something over 300 cases, should that be of concern?

Jeff Pothof:

I think it’s certainly of concern. I think what we need to do is look at those cases and figure out where are they at. Are they somewhat sporadic? Are we able to keep up on contact tracing and keep ahead of this so those cases can’t then exponentially increase with the next round? If we find ourselves in a situation where we can’t keep up on it, then we need to make harder decisions about what to do with our campuses. If we have robust contact tracing, some of those individuals can be isolated and they can’t keep spreading it to other people, we’ve got a fighting chance. But to say that there isn’t concern, there is concern about how the college campuses are going to work out this fall.

Frederica Freyberg:

You touched on this briefly, but for those students not in residence halls who are getting kind of regular testing, should the students outside residence halls take it on themselves to get tests either through their school or community or clinics?

Jeff Pothof:

Yeah. I think especially if you’re in congregate living or close to other people, for sure if you are not able or are unwilling to abide by social distancing or masking guidelines, it is really important to have regular testing in those demographics so we can identify this especially in those asymptomatic patients before they are able to spread it to a whole lot of other people. So yeah, we would encourage anyone in those environments to get tested.

Frederica Freyberg:

Just super briefly, what are health care workers steeling for as we come into the regular flu season?

Jeff Pothof:

A bit of apprehension and then a silver lining. Our big fear is if we have high levels of COVID-19 and high levels of influenza, we could out-strip our personal protective equipment. We could outstrip the number of rooms we have to take care of people with respiratory illness. The silver lining is with mask mandates and physical distancing in place, those are also effective against the flu. So we’re hopeful the influenza season is tamed down this year because those measures are in place.

Frederica Freyberg:

Good point. Dr. Jeff Pothof, thanks very much.

Jeff Pothof:

You bet. Thank you.