WISCONSIN (WFRV) — Five years ago today, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, shutting down daily life and reshaping public health.
Now, area health professionals are looking back on the impact it had on health care systems.
Dr. Jeff Pothof, who has been with UW Health for 15 years, said the COVID-19 pandemic was unlike anything he had experienced.
As an emergency medicine doctor, chief quality officer and leader during the pandemic, Pothof and his medical team began preparing for the worst.
“Our early preparations were really more along the lines of, ‘There could be someone from China, maybe Italy, who will travel to Dane County, Madison, Wisconsin, and what would we do to be able to isolate them and keep them from spreading it to other people here in the local community?'” Pothof said.
He added that his team had experience with the Ebola virus, so their plan was to contain the coronavirus with similar methods and strong public health practices.
That approach changed when Wisconsin’s first confirmed COVID-19 case came through Dane County Regional Airport on March 18.
“We were lucky, in the sense, that that person had had some symptoms and was taken directly to our emergency department at University Hospital,” Pothof said. “They were isolated, the testing happened, it went off like clockwork.”
Looking back, Pothof said the lessons learned stand out the most.
“I think it was a period in time where the more we came together and the more we cared about our neighbors, the better we did,” he said. “I think that’s a cool message that still holds true today, and certainly when it comes to communicable diseases. It is the winning strategy.”
COVID-19 has not gone away completely, and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services says vaccination remains the most effective way to prevent its spread.
