Here & Now

UW System President Thompson on Rapid Test Sites

Frederica Freyberg:

UW System President Tommy Thompson is taking it out on COVID.

Tommy Thompson:

Time to put the hammer down. Smash COVID.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thompson is smashing pumpkins to promote surge testing on UW campuses. We sat down with the former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, former governor and now interim president of the UW to ask about the system’s approach to mitigating infection, especially ahead of the holidays. We should note PBS Wisconsin is part of the UW System. Governor, thank you very much for joining us.

Tommy Thompson:

Frederica, it’s always a privilege to be on your program and be interviewed by you. It’s been many years that you and I have had interviews and always a pleasant experience for me. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are welcome, true enough. I wanted to ask first why did you partner with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set up these surge rapid results testing sites on UW campuses?

Tommy Thompson:

We didn’t actually join with them. They came out and observed what we were doing. We were quite successful in knocking down the spread of this terrible insidious virus epidemic. They asked would it be possible to do that in a wider (audio breaks up) … give us the test and give us some resources to hire individuals. And they came in and gave us 208 individuals to help implement it and 250,000 (audio breaks up). They wanted us to see if we could knock down this terrible spiral that’s going on in the state of Wisconsin. We’re just getting hit terribly with this virus and it is affecting everybody: education, TV, communication, farmers, business people, all over. Especially the educators. So I wanted to help them and they gave me this opportunity. We were chosen by them to be the beta case to try something new and if we’re successful here, they want to turn it out across the nation and the Biden people are calling me tomorrow to talk to me about it. So it’s getting some exposure because we have been successful.

Frederica Freyberg:

How successful has it been? How many people on campuses and in the community have availed themselves of those tests at those sites?

Tommy Thompson:

We’ve only been in operation a little — about two weeks and we’re still setting up sites but we’ve already tested 35,000 individuals (audio breaks up)…because communities all over the state where we have a campus can come in, free of charge, get a very quick test. We can be in and out — in and out in about 30 minutes and have a test to prove you’re negative or positive. If you’re positive, we want you to quarantine and then we also have what is called the confirmatory test to make sure that if you test positive, you have a second test which goes into a laboratory which is more expensive. We’ve been able (audio breaks up) about 6,000 cases so far that are positive. 6,500 out of that 35,000 that were positive.

Frederica Freyberg:

Okay. And that 6,000 is just within the couple of weeks that you’ve been testing or since the beginning kind of of the pandemic?

Tommy Thompson:

Since the beginning — since the beginning (audio breaks up) 240,000 tests. And out of the 640,000 tests we have 6,591.

Frederica Freyberg:

Back to the rapid test, how reliable are those?

Tommy Thompson:

I would say they are in the neighborhood of 80 to 85%. There’s going to be some false negatives and some false positives but the truth of the matter is — you (audio breaks up) accurate it is, you want to look at how many people that are positive. If you’re positive and it is confirmed positive, then quarantine them so they don’t spread it. The biggest problem with this epidemic, this pandemic, is the fact that you have (audio breaks up) he or she is asymptomatic, no signs but is still spewing that virus out when he or she is out and around in the public. For the first 72 hours, there’s usually no symptoms. We want to get to that individual early and say to that young man or young lady or whoever it is, an elderly person and say stay home, quarantine. You may have it. Get ready, get rested and get some therapies ready to take.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Wisconsin COVID cases are surging as we’ve described it crisis numbers according to state health officials, Dane County’s new emergency order bans indoor gatherings of people from different households. As students from across Wisconsin prepare for Thanksgiving break, what is UW guidance to them?

Tommy Thompson:

We’re telling those students we would rather have you stay on campus. We would rather have you stay in your dorm. That’s our preference. But we know students are going to go home over Thanksgiving. I did and you did. That’s the rite of passage. You go home for Thanksgiving and you go home for Christmas. We know that. Since we don’t want them to go home and infect their families, we want them tested before they go home. (audio breaks up) young woman that’s a student, get tested and then, if they want to come back after Thanksgiving they have to get tested twice. Once before they can move back into the dorms or back into school, they have to be tested and then they have to be tested again that first week. We want to make sure they don’t bring the epidemic, the virus back home from home back to the campus. So we’re being extra careful. But this is how we’ve been successful. We’ve been (audio breaks up) we’ve been diligent. We’ve taken a leadership position, and we’re driving down those individuals that are spreading it and quarantining them. If they test positive isolate them.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tommy Thompson, president of the UW System, we need to leave it there. Thank you very much.

Tommy Thompson:

You’re wonderful. Have a great weekend. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thompson says classes on most UW campuses will be fully online after Thanksgiving except for Green Bay and Oshkosh where students will return to in-person instruction.