Q&A with Dana Hawkinson, MD

Dr. Hawkinson is an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Kansas Medical Center. With COVID-19 restrictions on flight travel being lifted on Thursday, we asked Hawkinson the key takeaways from the pandemic and how we as a community are prepared to move forward.

“A large thing that we need to work out in the United States is infrastructure for public health, for access to medical care for all everybody in those communities. I think that’s important to understand moving forward.”

Photo via KUMC

Q: With the COVID-19 restrictions absolving soon, what are the lessons we should take away?

A:  A lesson that we can take is as a community, there are levels that we can learn about overall public health. As we move further into those public health emergencies, we learn that we have more knowledge about how to protect people. Certainly, we know with the advent of therapeutics, like drugs to treat it, but also vaccines to help prevent severe disease and hospitalization. We can then remove some of those restrictions and that’s what we’re seeing now. 

Moving through three years into the pandemic there are certain things that are going to be lifted like an ending to the public health emergency, but that does not mean that the disease is gone. Understand that there are still people, demographics, and populations that can be significantly impacted by the disease. How will it impact moving forward? It means that the federal dollars, resources and maybe local community resources are not going to be prioritized for COVID, necessarily. Impacting some people’s access to care and their ability to get cared for. A large thing that we need to work out in the United States is infrastructure for public health, for access to medical care for all everybody in those communities. I think that’s important to understand moving forward.

Q: How many COVID-19 patients does the University of Kansas Medical Center have currently?

A: We have 28 total cases right now, of which only 13 are being actively treated and monitored. Treating with supportive care, oxygen or maybe treating them with antivirals. We have one patient with severe disease in the ICU needing meeting management. 

Overall, the numbers are much better. We would like the number of patients to be zero but it’s a lot better than the previous couple of months with high 20s low 30s. We are improving and hopefully through the summer, we will continue to see improvements in the number of active cases. 

Q: How will this affect the availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the future?

A: People are concerned because when you remove the public health emergency, government funding will not be paying for the vaccines. Usually, private insurance is going to be picking that up. If you have Medicare or Medicaid those are probably going to be picked up by those services as well. 

It’s those other people that may not have really any access to any type of medical payment or insurance, that it may be reduced. But unfortunately, I think the bigger problem is the supply is going to be so great, because overall what we have seen recently in this past year, is that the uptake for those vaccines is so low. 

Q: What recommendation do you have for a citizen or foreign traveler who has not taken a plane flight since pre-pandemic?

A: I recommend protecting yourself as much as possible, especially if you feel you may be at higher risk. Make sure you are up to date with your vaccination and talk with your medical provider. Wear a mask during travel, whether you’re in an airport, train station, bus station or wherever you may be traveling. The last time I flew, it was probably about 0.05 percent of people still wearing masks and we’ve seen that number reduce probably every month since mask restrictions on airplanes stopped.