our engineer has everything he needs before we get started.
All right.
I think we're having our last warm day for a while.
I know I went out to get lunch without a jacket on and it was lovely.
Are you interested?
Yeah, I am in Madison.
Actually just right off Whitney way right now.
Okay.
And you're with the School of Medicine.
School of Medicine and Public Health.
Okay.
So give me one more moment.
I'm just chatting with him and making sure
we have everything ready.
Okay, so thank you for doing this.
Just start with your name and title.
My name is John Tempe.
I am the Associate Dean for Public Health and Community Engagement
at the School of Medicine and Public Health.
And just tell me a little bit about what is going on with respiratory illnesses right now.
At this point in time, we're seeing
increases in just about everything out there.
And in more specific viruses, we're seeing increases in influenza.
And in Sarah's COVID-19 and in RSV.
So we're seeing a lot of ill people and our hospitals are getting quite full.
What does quite full mean?
Well, I've heard that some of the hospitals are having difficulty finding
rooms for everybody.
One of my colleagues in pediatric infectious disease indicated that there are a lot of
children hospitalized with influenza at this time.
Yeah, and the DHS dashboard shows that it's worse for zero to four-year-olds right now.
Why is that?
Well, in general, with respiratory viruses, our youngest and our oldest patients have the
most complications.
For children from the time of birth until they're four years old,
they tend to have immune systems that are not experienced with viruses.
They tend to be smaller.
So for example, respiratory sensational virus or RSV can cause a lot of secretion and produce
difficulty breathing.
And almost with any of the viruses, we see a lot more fever with the first or second time exposure
as compared to those of us older who've seen many of these viruses many, many times.
And so the older population isn't seeing the rate as much as the zero to four-year-olds.
Well, we might be seeing the viruses commonly, but the exposure is less.
And to be perfectly honest, the age group that has the most exposure and the highest rates of
infection tend to be our school-aged children by very nature of being in a school situation,
having a lot of contact with other people their age, being in congregate living situations or congregate
situations. However, when they bring them on home to younger brothers and sisters,
that's where we tend to see more of the problems.
And a pediatric patient recently passed away is the severity of influenza, particularly worse this
season. Well, you know, if we go back just a few years into the pandemic,
we saw virtually no deaths in the United States from influenza in children.
Last year, we saw kind of a return to, unfortunately, what we call normal, which is around 200 deaths
per year from influenza. This year, across the nation, we've had about 20 deaths so far in
one, children or individuals under the age of 18. And so the fact that Wisconsin has had one
death in a child is fairly average for influenza, but it's very tragic because most of these children
don't have underlying medical problems, and most of them have not been vaccinated.
And I was going to ask, what are vaccine uptake rates looking like for children?
Well, in general, for children under the age of four years old, we do relatively well,
comparatively, but I have to step it back and say across Wisconsin, only 31% of people eligible
for receiving vaccine have received vaccine so far. If we look at younger children, they tend to
be up in the 40s to 50%, as do people over the age of 65. But we're really missing a lot of
people out there that we could provide a lot of benefit to.
There was something in the email sent to me about new insights. Do you have
anything in particular that's kind of new information about these viruses?
Nothing in particular other than the fact that we're watching very, very closely for
this avian influenza and the potential that it could jump into humans. As of
today, we know of at least three cases across the country where we don't know
where the individual contracted the virus from. Most of the other cases have been from
dairy cattle or for poultry, but it's really worrisome. And I mentioned that simply because
during the time that we have the regular influenza circulating, we have the potential for mixing
within individuals and the production of different viruses that could attain the ability to spread
human to human. And so that's one of the biggest new concerns we have out there.
Anything else that you would like to add? Well, I think for anybody interested,
there's really good information available through the CDC at cdc.vaccines. I want to make
sure I have this correct. So if you go to vaccines.gov, that can provide you up-to-date
information about where you can get your vaccines and also a lot of background information.
Another site is cdc.gov forward slash risk less do more. And that can provide you up-to-date
information on what's happening in your community with respiratory viruses and a lot of other
good information. One last thing, have we reached our peak in terms of these rates
increasing or are we going to continue to see more increases? I suspect we're going to see
here in the southern Wisconsin anyways, increases for the next two or three weeks.
Typically, influenza will peak out in late January, early February. We're seeing COVID-19
coming on up at this point in time and RSV typically peaks in February. So we're still
going to be dealing with these viruses for a few more weeks here.
What about other parts of the state like some parts of northern Wisconsin are at a very high
categorization? Well, in general, we see similar patterns across the state for the most part.
Some regions might see a focus that is more intense for a while. But in general, when we talk about
the viruses being a circulation for the next few weeks, this applies to our entire state.
All right. That's all I have for you. Anything else?
No, I think last word is if you haven't been vaccinated yet for influenza and COVID,
go out and get vaccinated. It's not too late. And if you're eligible for the RSV vaccine,
really think hard about getting that one as well. So other than that, enjoy and keep healthy.
All right. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Take care.
Sophia, anything you need for me? No, I think I'm good. Just do you have any idea of when the
story will air? So we are going to put a portion of this interview in our program this evening.
Okay, sounds great. All right. Thanks for your time. You're welcome. You take care now. Bye-bye.