(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

The last time we talked with Wood County Health Department Commissioner Ben Robison in October of last year, it was our hope that the next time he was on The Journal it would be as an in studio guest, but as with so many things with this pandemic, everything is subject to change.

So, joining us via Zoom is Commissioner Robison.

Again, welcome to The Journal, Commissioner.

- Hi, thanks.

Happy to be here again.

- Yeah.

Talk about, again, we last talked in October and in the COVID pandemic world, that's decades in the past.

Tell us where we're at right now and where we were maybe vis a vis in October and what things look like now versus what we thought they might look like.

Yeah, so right now, like many places throughout the country, we are experiencing the surge being driven by this Omicron variant.

All of last year, even at the peak of our surge, last year around the holiday season, we never broke 200 cases a day.

As of this week, we're averaging about 245 cases a day just over these last seven days.

As we are looking ahead, we expect that we are not quite at the peak of this yet.

We may not know exactly the date, but we are assuming we have a couple of weeks still of cases increasing just based on what we saw last year with our holiday season.

And so, compared to where we were this fall, where we thought we might be coming out of this, with a downward trend, we are now expecting that we're going to be having some increasing cases at least for the next coming weeks, and just a reminder that once we go up to the top, we've got to come back down.

And, it usually takes about as much time to come down as it did to go up.

- Ah, so yeah, so we have some additional time now that we're gonna have to deal with this.

I know in mid-December, I was over and got my booster at the health department.

Has that continued to roll out consistently?

Are people coming in and getting boosters when they're supposed to?

Are they coming in and getting vaccinated a little bit more than maybe they were in the past, or at least maybe we're finally, I know we're creeping toward I think 70% now of vaccinated people in Ohio, but how is that going as far as the Health Department is concerned?

- Yeah, so we are seeing a pretty descent uptake of vaccinations among our groups.

Here in Wood County, just under half of all people who are eligible for a booster have gotten one.

We are also approaching a little, almost 30% of all of our five to 11 year olds who have gotten their vaccine series, at least started.

And so, that's also really encouraging.

Relative to the state, that puts us a little bit ahead.

So, that's encouraging.

Here, we're noticing that almost three quarters of our senior population, our 65 plus population has already gotten their boosters, which is great news.

And so, we continue to make vaccine clinics available three days a week here in the Health Department, sometimes four.

And, we also work with our school partners and many of our other of our provider partners to keep vaccine available throughout Wood County.

- Now, one of the things that people are, I guess ongoingly surprised about and use as an argument about not getting vaccinated, or not believing some of the science that's out there is that well, there are breakthrough cases, people that are vaccinated and they're contracting either well in this case now Omicron, I guess, but what are you, how do you address that issue with people who say, "Well, what's the point in getting vaccinated?

I'm going to get it one way or the other."

I know that the downside is if you get it, obviously it's much more impactful on you, but what argument do you make with people who still may say, "Gee, what's the point of me getting vaccinated?"

- Yeah, great question.

So, we've actually been monitoring this information since August.

And so, back in August, we started to track how the incidence rate for people who had completed their vaccine series compared to those who hadn't completed their vaccine series.

And, to really break down what incidence rate means, it essentially means the percentage of the population that gets a disease.

And, oftentimes these percentages are pretty small, so we, instead of setting them against 100% which is, you know 100 cases, you know which is what we would do, we set it against 100,000 cases so that we have bigger numbers we can deal with.

So, as we've been tracking this since August, what we've found is that across that whole length of time, people who have completed their vaccine series had about a three times lower risk of getting COVID than those who had not completed their vaccine series.

And, the percentage of cases that were accounted for by those who were fully vaccinated has varied from week to week, but we've seen a marked increase in that over these last few weeks.

And that, likely reflects what we're seeing with the Omicron variant.

A couple of weeks ago for the first time since August, people who are fully vaccinated accounted for the majority of new cases within the week.

And, so that led us to do a little bit more digging to understand how boosters contributed to increasing protection against COVID as we move out of Delta and move in to Omicron.

The CDC has told us that without your booster, you're only about 35% protected against fighting off protection, and with your booster, that protection goes up to about 75%.

And so, when we looked at the numbers within our general population, what we found was that the case curves as we're seeing new cases come in.

For those who have not received their boosters, but had completed their series were almost identical to people who had not completed their primary series at all within the general population.

And, but when you look at the booster population, there is quite a bit lower incidence rate in fact and when we look at this overall, you're able to reduce your risk by about half.

And so, when we project this out, if we were to see this trend continue, over the next two weeks with a peak at January 20th, and then we'd see that decline like we talked about, we would anticipate that if you had not completed your series or if you had not gotten your booster, and you are in one of those two groups that about one in nine of that population will get COVID over this surge if this trend continues.

- Okay.

During that same time period, only about one in 23 people who get their booster will experience COVID in the general population.

- Ah, yeah, now one of the things and I guess that I tried to touch on a little bit there was that the impact of unvaccinated people in terms of how intensely they are affected if they were to contract COVID is apparently markedly different than those who have gone through the full sequence, so speak to that just a little bit or as much as you'd like to.

No, you're exactly right.

And, in fact when we talked to our partners in the hospital, we asked, you know, what's your experience with people coming in to seek care if they're vaccinated or if they're unvaccinated?

And, certainly with Omicron variant, we've seen more people who are fully vaccinated seeking care in the hospital.

But, what we're hearing from our hospital partners is that their stays are relatively short.

They may come in get some oxygen, get stabilized, and they're able to go home.

For people who are unvaccinated, they tend to have a much longer stay.

More than 90% of the people that are in ICUs are people who are unvaccinated.

And, people who are vaccinated and do need care tend to be people with more underlying conditions or tend to be older.

So, if you are fully vaccinated and not boosted and you're older, you are particularly in need of a booster.

We look at that data, the same data that we did for the general population for our 65 plus population.

The difference in incidence rate is even more pronounced, and in fact, what we have noticed is that compared to folks who have had their boosters, to just those who have gotten their initial series done, people with their boosters are three times less likely to get COVID, and in fact if you have never gotten your vaccine and you're 65 plus, we project, given the current rates we're seeing, if things are unchanged with a peak on January 20th, that as many as one in five seniors, 65 plus will get COVID within that eight week surge.

- [Steve] Oh wow.

- And, these are the folks that are at the greatest risks for severe outcomes, most likely to be hospitalized, most likely to die.

And so, just like you're saying that being vaccinated can change your experience, not only can it protect you and reduce your risk for getting disease, but if you get it, it means you can likely recover at home.

We've heard about these antivirals that have been approved, that can keep you out of the hospital.

There are not enough of those right now.

- Mm-hmm (affirmative) sure.

- And so, really your best defense at this point is to get a vaccine.

We want you to take precautions too like wearing your mask, limiting the number of people you're gathering with.

But, given how many cases of COVID there are, throughout our community.

There's a good possibility of being exposed, and so, getting your vaccine or getting your booster depending on where you are helps you to pick the path you want to walk, and will ensure that if you are exposed, if you do get sick, you're more likely to have a mild case and more likely to be able to recover at home rather than seeking care.

- Okay, when we come back we can talk a little bit more about that.

And, I know you have some other additional information statistically about what's going on as well.

Back in just a moment on The Journal with Wood County Health Department Commissioner Ben Robison.

Thank you for staying with us on The Journal.

Our guest is Wood County Health Department Commissioner Ben Robison.

And, one of the things you said right at the very end of that segment, "Vaccinations allow you to choose the path you want to take in terms of dealing with COVID."

And, I guess, when I heard that I thought, this is a situation where from the day that vaccines became available and became at least somewhat certified for use, that has been one of the consistent messages.

Vaccines are still the best defense against how you want to deal with COVID.

And, I guess, that's been your message every time we've talked and that has been the one thing that's run through this.

The one theme is please get vaccinated.

So, talk a little bit about that again, and where we stand with that in terms of that message.

- Right, you know, what vaccines do is offer two distinct benefits.

The first is what we hoped would originally be the case across the board is that they prevent the likelihood of transmission.

Now, what we've found is that they don't prevent it in every case, but they substantially reduce the risk of getting COVID.

And, that has been a consistent trend across the population.

But, there is a population benefit for that to be fully experienced.

And, we know this because when we look at our senior population, where more than 90% of them have been fully vaccinated for a long time, the incidence rates among our seniors are lower than the general population.

And, that's because they as a population are protecting each other.

So, if a whole population has high rates of vaccine uptake, if a single vaccine fails, the other vaccines can help to revive protection where that one vaccine experience may not be sufficient.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- So, setting aside the opportunity to reduce incidence and spread, the other benefit is that it reduces your experience of the disease.

And so, that is what's going to be really important with COVID as we move forward, particularly as our case rates are especially high.

So, when you have an underlying level of immunity, you have the ability to fight off COVID even as COVID is changing, likely that the experience of immunity that you have gotten from your vaccine is going to give you enough similarity to provide a level of protection.

So, you may still get sick, but the sickness you're going to get is going to be reduced compared to what you would have had if you had no underlying immunity at all.

A person might say, "Well, can't you get immunity from getting sick?"

I'd say, "Of course you could, and there is benefit from recovery from COVID, but the problem is is that in order to get protection from COVID, if it requires you to get COVID, it's sort of counterproductive."

So, if you're trying to reduce your experience and give yourself the best chance to have a good outcome, vaccination is your best path forward.

And, between the recovery that we're gonna see and the vaccination that we're going to have, we think that as we move forward, COVID will become less and less of a concern.

And, when we add in these antivirals as well as the immunity that's within our population, that will help us to reduce the concern of COVID.

And, as we move forward, we'll see this become less and less of a concern as we develop the ability as a population to fight it off and to have less severe outcomes from the disease.

- Yeah, now one of the things that we've entered into now, and of course have been for a month or so is flu season.

And, one of the stories you hear out there as well, is it possible to have a combined Coronavirus, flu symptom or activity.

So, talk a little bit about that, because of course there are some similarities but there are differences to if you have Coronavirus and you have the flu.

So, try and clear that up a little bit if you can.

Sure, so we do know that flu and COVID are not protective of each other.

So, you can be infected of both at the same time.

And, oftentimes, if you go to a doctor to seek care, they'll test you on a panel for all three diseases, influenza A, influenza B and COVID.

There is really no way to figure out if you have those diseases unless you're tested.

COVID does have that one distinctive symptom of loss of taste or smell.

That's kind of a good indicator that you probably have COVID compared to other things.

But, you really have to be tested.

And so, when you think about these two diseases, both of them can look very similar.

They share a lot of the same symptoms.

And, unfortunately, if the co occur you can have two things fighting your immune system at once.

So, it's really important that if you do have illnesses, respiratory illnesses, you seek care, you get testing.

Even as testing is tight, if you're sick, we want you to stay home, seek that PCR test if you have to go to a lab to get it done.

And, very likely, even if it takes a couple of days, you'll have your results back before you are ready to go back into the workplace or into your environment.

So, the more that we are proactive in seeking that care, the more we give ourselves the opportunities to get supportive therapies.

Tamiflu for instance has to be started within 48 hours of symptom onset.

So, you really need to get yourself to the doctor quickly to take advantage of that.

And then, these antivirals too, have a time limit within which you've got to get them started for them to be beneficial for COVID.

So, as we go down the road and that supply increases, seeking care early, engaging your physician and getting good reliable testing is gonna give us the best chance we have to have the best experience we have should we get those diseases.

- Yeah, now with regard to testing, should you just get tested on a regular basis, or should you look to testing when you're saying, "Gee, I'm not feeling quite right?"

I mean, because obviously we don't have enough tests right now.

Is it a concern that people who may not actually be in a situation where they have COVID, but they think they might, are we going to overload the testing system?

We kind of already have I guess in a way, but should everybody just get tested regularly if they can, or should you say, "Gee, maybe today's the day I want to get tested.

I just don't feel quite the way I did yesterday"?

- Well, right now with test supply being so high and in such demand, I think that we're in a different place than we might be down the road.

- Okay.

- So, I do think it's possible that as the test supply increases that regular testing could become a part of people's experience for a time period.

For right now, though, with the test supply so tight, we really want people to be tested when they are symptomatic.

- Okay.

- And, something to note about these rapid tests in particular, the FDA has indicated that the rapid tests are not as good at detecting the Omicron variant compared to previous variants.

And, it's always been the case with rapid tests that if you have symptoms of COVID, and you test negative, you have to do a follow up PCR, but that is even more true right now with Omicron, because there's a greater risk for false negative with a rapid test.

- Oh, wow.

- And so, if you have symptoms, and you feel ill enough to want to stay home, what we'd encourage you to do is to find a place to get a PCR test even if it's a couple of days out from where you are.

If that is either too long, or if there's a financial burden to do that, you can certainly seek these rapid tests that are available in different places.

If you test positive on a rapid test, it's a reliable positive.

There is no need for additional testing.

You can stop right there and give somebody else your spot at whatever else you were gonna get.

But that way, then, it gives us the best use of testing across the whole population.

And, we do think as you move forward the supply will catch up again.

Here in Wood County, the Wood County Health Department moved about 25,000 tests in advance of the holidays, and we think that helped to identify cases that would have otherwise led to additional cases through gatherings.

So, we think that's a good thing, but we like other counties are finding that our supply has to catch up.

We think that it will in the coming months, but for now we need to be a bit more judicious.

And encourage people to really be tested when you have symptoms and if you are exposed to someone with COVID, monitor, wear your mask when you're out in public and if you have symptoms, seek that testing that we described.

- Okay, great.

We'll be back in just a moment with more with Wood County Health Department Commissioner Ben Robison here on The Journal.

Thanks for staying with us on The Journal.

Our guest is the Wood County Health Department Commissioner Ben Robison.

We've spent almost all the time that we've ever talked talking about COVID.

There are other things going on, and one of the things that you do at the health department is what's called the Community Health Assessment.

So, talk about that so that we don't spend all of our time, there are other health things going on that people need to be aware of and pay attention to.

But, talk about the Health Assessment Project.

- Well, right.

We do a Community Health Assessment once every three years.

We do this in partnership with the Wood County Hospital and our other community partners.

And, it's a chance for us to take stock of where we are in terms of our health indicators.

And, that data helps us to set three year health priorities to improve the health of residents here in Wood County.

We are in the process of finalizing the data for our Community Health Assessment, and we're going to be doing a sharing of that information with our community partners as well as the general public to make them aware of what we saw in our data.

And then, in the weeks and months that follow, we're gonna begin to compile our Community Health Improvement Plan.

That plan will help to stipulate where we go from here.

What are the things that we want to improve in particular?

Where do we see unique opportunities to do so?

And then, how do we work together as a whole community to make those improvements between now and the next health assessment to see how we did?

- Now, what are some of the things that have come out in the past from the health assessment?

What are some of the, I don't want to say typical things, but what are some of the issues that tend to be ongoing, that we work on as hard as we can, but they're a challenge each year, each time we do this?

- Well, certainly, we like other places throughout the country are experiencing a need to focus on chronic disease.

Things like eating well and exercising continue to be challenges here in Wood County like they are other places.

Other issues, like behavior choices, like smoking or things that contribute to access to care are really important.

And so, when we look at these things overall, what we know is that when people have opportunities to be healthy, they tend to make healthier choices, and when we make healthier choices across the board, we have better outcomes for health in all cases, whether we're talking about COVID or day to day life, or just your ability to have a high quality of life over the course of where it is that you live.

It's hard to think that at some point we're going to be beyond COVID, but we are, and so as we think about these cases one of the things that we did is we took an assessment last year, because we had just come out of the most recent surge from COVID, and we wanted to know what the impacts from COVID were, because we think that our recovery from COVID is going to take many years because we've been battling this for two year already.

So, we have COVID informed data.

It'll help us to set a trajectory to get back to where Wood County can be healthy as a whole community, and our goal is not to just get back to where we were before the pandemic started, but to set benchmarks to be even healthier than we were at any time in history.

And so, we think that we are just one health agency in the whole county.

We want to provide some strategic direction and leadership, but really it's the collection of all the community partners who together create the public health system.

And so, we are looking for those partnerships to be able to be relied upon, to be able to invest in these issues.

And, the greater extent to which we do that, the greater of an impact we're gonna have on these health indicators that help us to think about what makes Wood County a great place to live.

- Yeah, and, I'm gonna, this one is not one that we had talked about before.

The challenge, and I know, because one of the things the health department does is restaurant inspection, and with the massive turnover it seems of people employed in that industry, has that created new challenges for your folks when they go out to inspect?

Because, obviously you probably have less experienced people working in restaurants who may or may not for the most part are up to speed on what they should be doing, how they should do it.

Has that become anything statistically that you can say, "Yeah, it's a little trickier now than it was before COVID," or is that just business as usual, kind of?

- Well, what I will say first is that our business owners and our restaurant owners do a great job of really trying to provide a good quality product here to the residents of Wood County.

So, certainly there can be times when we have to do you know, some education as we head into these locations.

That has always been the case from year to year even outside the pandemic.

And so, I think our goal really is to work with those facilities, and that's what we do.

So, generally speaking, we find restaurant owners who are committed to wanting to be healthy.

That's good for a lot of reasons.

You know, if people are going to your establishment and getting sick, that word will spread and whether we take action or not, you may not have customers.

- Right.

- So, we really see ourselves as dual partners in these efforts.

And, you know, I have a brother who is a chef, and worked in that industry for many, many years, and he was really committed to this.

He saw it as a reflection on the quality of his product, a reflection on the reputation of his establishment.

And, that's what we encounter when we go out into our community and where there are opportunities for education, we offer them, and we get great support from the restaurant industry here in Wood County.

- Yeah, and, that's good to know, because you know, you hear constantly tough to find employees, tough to get people who return to work, do whatever.

And, of course in any industry, any business you find that, you know, teaching people, getting them up to speed is one of your biggest challenges and the same would be true in the restaurant, the food industry, that sort of thing.

Any other things that people should know the health department has on its agenda coming up?

Any new initiatives or continuing initiatives that people need to know about?

- I think as we look ahead, I think that this is a time for us to think about what we want our experience of life to be, right?

And, as we look ahead, whether we're talking about COVID, or talking about a recovery from COVID, a return to normal life, it's gonna take work.

We have been battling this pandemic for two years, and I think now at this point, we're experiencing not just the impact to our physical health, but to our social health and our mental health.

And, I think as we think about what it means to be a member of this community, just want to encourage people to continue to make investments in their family and their friends.

You know, there may be revisions that we're making because of the high cases right now, but find a way to stay connected.

That's really critical.

And, where we find places that maybe are not working the way we want them to work.

Maybe we haven't had the connections like we've wanted.

We feel a bit more opportunity to invest in our health and what we have.

This is a time of resolutions like we always do.

- Right.

- So, think about those health resolutions that can improve your quality of life, and let's do it not just for a season, but really as a reflection of what we want our community to look like.

And, I think that's probably where I want people to think.

It's not just about where we are.

It's easy with COVID to get caught up in the here and now, but to set a longer vision about how the decisions we make now will have an impact in two weeks from now, a month from now, maybe even years from now.

And, we can begin that today, even on an individual level with improving our health.

Maybe we have to get rid of the holiday baggage that we've added through the snacks and the inactivity.

- Yep.

- Or, maybe you want to look at the activities that we have planned, in light of high cases, and maybe we postpone those for a time that we're less likely to encounter COVID or potentially and inadvertently contribute to COVID spread.

So, just want to encourage people to think have a long view.

We are a great community, particularly when we work together.

And, just want to encourage us to just remind each other that we are all Wood County and the more we rally together, the more we can have with long term outcomes and have the community built that we wanted to have.

- Yeah.

Great message, Commissioner.

Thank you so much for that, and thanks again for being here.

And, with any luck, the next time we talk, you can be here in the studio and we'll be able to do this a different way.

The old-fashioned way.

The old-fashioned way.

So, good.

But again, and thanks to all your folks there at the health department for everything they do for everyone.

So, appreciate that very much.

You can check us out at WBGU.org and of course, you can watch us every Thursday night, 8:00 on WBGU PBS.

Good night, and good luck.

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