USF Health experts and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor participated in a COVID-19 roundtable discussion leaving no topic unturned.

The COVID-19 Town Hall, which was held virtually and broadcast from Busch Gardens Tampa Bay on Thursday, Oct. 15, was hosted by the USF College of Public Health (COPH) and The Big Biology podcast.

Moderated by COPH disease ecology expert Dr. Lynn “Marty” Martin and Dr. Art Woods, a biology professor from the University of Montana—who both host the Big Biology podcast—panelists were asked a series of questions to provide viewers with more insight on COVID-19, ranging from the medical to economic implications. 

Panelists included:

• The Honorable Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa
• Kami Kim, MD, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine professor of internal medicine concentrating in infectious diseases and international medicine
• Edwin Michael, PhD, USF College of Public Health professor specializing in epidemiology and population ecology of disease transmission
• Michael Teng, PhD, USF Health Morsani College of Medicine associate professor and expert in immunology and vaccine development

“This live event was a chance to cover the many aspects of COVID—medical, public health, policy and economics—that people care about in a casual format, conducive to understanding and enabling direct input from the audience in the form of Q&A,” said Martin, who said he started the Big Biology podcast in an attempt to help clearly communicate with the public on research they otherwise would not ordinally access or even understand readily. “I was very happy with how the live event came off…and have heard a lot of praise from many colleagues and friends. Whether it was beneficial is for others to say, but we hit the mark we hoped for.”

“COVID is very unpredictable and many of the things we thought we knew don’t necessarily apply to COVID. With that being said, we’ve learned a lot. So right now, there are treatments that do help patients,” Kim said when asked about the increased mortality rates in the U.S. when compared to other countries. “We do have treatments that look very promising, and now we understand the disease better so we’re better at managing it.” 

Teng said it is still hard to tell when the average person will have access to a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I wish I knew, but I think one of the things I’ve been really impressed with is the response to this virus,” he said. “It’s been amazing to see how quickly some of these products have been making it into clinical trials. We may have a vaccine that could be deployed next year, which is amazingly fast.”

He also added that while there have been pauses in the trials process due to unexplained illnesses, he’s still optimistic.

“There are so many good candidates out there. I know we’ve heard in the press that there has been some pauses in the clinical trials, these are sort of natural pauses when there are unexplained illnesses within the study population, when you have a study population of 30-60,000 people, it’s not unusual to find one or two unexplained illnesses,” he said. “I’m pretty optimistic, I think by the end of this year we will find a vaccine that has some promise of being a first line vaccine. Certainly, by next year we will have something that can be deployed into the public.”

According to Teng, the much bigger question is who will get the vaccine first.

“If you’re young and healthy, you’re probably not getting this vaccine until 2022 maybe, but if you’re in a high-risk group probably next year some time,” he said.

When asked of the possibility for increased stay at home restrictions over the winter for the public, Castor said it will all depend on the science. 

“We are taking it as the science goes, and we have had great adherence to our mask order, great adherence to our safer at home restrictions as well, we closed down quickly in our community and reopened very thoughtfully based on the science,” she said. “We will do what is necessary to keep our community safe, but [we are] clearly hoping we don’t have to go past those steps of wearing a mask, social distancing, and ensuring that if you are in any of those [in the higher risk categories] including the elderly and comorbidities, that you are staying at home and keeping yourself away from others. We will continue to travel that path and hopefully we can continue to recover economically, and we aren’t going to see the incredible spike we saw back in July.

Michael said he anticipates not seeing COVID-19 get close to slowing down until March of 2021.  

“It’s not going to go away,” he said. “COVID is going to join influenza and circulate globally and that’s especially the case if the immunity is not permanent; new births will occur and people will move and that will keep the system oscillating.”

He said we’ll have to get comfortable with the idea of COVID sticking around.

“Once the vaccines do come, you’ll have a booster system, so for me it’s just waiting until the vaccines come into play. Flu is part of our life and that is how it is going to be with COVID,” he said.  

The public is invited to watch the town hall via the USF College of Public Health Facebook page.

It will also be available on the Big Biology podcast on November 25, 2020.  You can download Big Biology from www.bigbiology.org or anywhere one gets podcasts.

“One amazing thing about biology right now is just how much is happening on all fronts,” Woods said. “Marty and I say to each other, and we really believe, that biology is in a golden age – with more exciting findings appearing now than ever before. Doing the podcast gives us a chance to interface with the people who are making those discoveries happen – incredibly exciting. The live events also add another element to this, because they can focus on breaking news that’s happening even before the scientific publishing process catches up.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health