Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce: Clear Lake Connections Podcast Episode 42 | Extraordinary Scientific Development And The Light At T ...

Press release from the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce:

November 4, 2021

This week on Clear Lake Connections Podcast presented by UTMB Health: Meet Dr. Philip Keiser, Infectious disease specialist and the Chief Public Health Officer of the Galveston County Health Authority. In this week’s episode, Dr. Keiser discusses his background in medicine and the current treatments that are rolling out when it comes to Covid-19. Dr. Keiser also talks about how the time scope of this particular pandemic has been more compressed, how hospital rates have been reduced by half in the past few months, information on the booster shot and the rollout of the children’s vaccine and it’s approval.

Dr.Kaiser, he is an infectious disease specialist has spent his entire career treating and diagnosing infectious diseases. When he started this in the 80s and 90s, he was treating people with HIV and Aids and then for a period of his life he traveled to Africa and help set up HIV clinics and since 2016 the local health authority for Galveston County. He is the Chief Public Health Officer, and he is also a professor of infectious diseases at UTMB.

Since being in the limelight because of the pandemic, it has been a wild ride he says. He says one of the things he has learned is that he doesn’t talk like most public health officials. He will get calls from people, and they will ask him questions about statements that he has given. He doesn’t follow the script and he does it unintentionally. What this does is peaks people’s interests.

He is a faculty member at UTMB, and he has been there since 2008 and he arrived there on Sep 1st 13 days before Ike. He enjoys being at UTMB and in Galveston County. Being in this area has a lot of advantages and a lot of fun.

The job before Covid had to deal with a lot of different things such as tuberculosis, influenza outbreaks and with HIV. That pandemic rolled out quickly and his career followed a lot of that trajectory of HIV. He started as a medical student in 1982 and then in 83 they announced that they figured out the cause fog HIV and within 2 years there would be a vaccine for It and there still isn’t one. He has been able to see things where there has been a lot of struggles, a lot of disruption of the healthcare system and having to redesign things with new medication and a lot of trial error to continue.

Covid came on as a scope and the time scope has been more compressed and has taken days and weeks compared to other diseases. There is a point now that we have vaccines that work and technology that is helping. We are also seeing pills that help now so people don’t have to go to the hospital, it has been remarkable. He discusses some of the medicines and treatments that are happening currently in the medical field. The hospital rate is reducing by half with these things and things are changing and they are hoping that within sometime of 2022, if you go to your doctor with Covid symptoms they will be able to prescribe you this pill and you will feel better after the pill treatment.

The numbers in Galveston County are improving dramatically. We have come off our worst surge. They were very high in July of this year than they had ever seen before. They were having about 500 cases a day. When you consider the population of Galveston County that is a large amount. The good news is that since it was the third surge, they got good at handling the situation He gives big kudos to the people at UTMB for holding everything together and having trained staff and flexibility during this time.

In September they saw the numbers start to collapse and they aren’t able to pinpoint it to anything, it just started declining rapidly. The negative side of this is that the future is unknown. It is not over yet and there is about 95,000 people in the county that have low immunity. They expect to see more outbreaks as we go along whether they are big or small, time will tell. Cases fell everywhere at once and no one can trace why it happened.

Herd immunity is enough people that are immune that the virus is no longer spreading rapidly. They are still seeing some cases, but it is nothing like they were seeing before. Other countries are having drop offs abut there are bumps like we have seen before. All and all, they are getting better at controlling thing, but it will always be there, much like the flu.

When it comes to the vaccine, they have vaccinated 350,000 people and there is 50,000 people that have had covid which means they now have immunity. When you look at people that have had covid and have been vaccinated and compare, vaccines do help. The vaccine is very effective, and it shows you how much people know about this specific vaccine. His input when it comes to the vaccine for 5–11-year hold’s, the Pfizer vaccine is on the verge of approval. They expect to have the vaccine in their hands next week. This vaccine is slightly different than the one that is given to adults in the sense that it is a tad smaller. It is more readily available. When it comes to the vaccine booster, it has been recommended. It has been approved and it includes all of the vaccines.

How remarkable has the response to Covid been over time? It has been so compressed. Scientists at UTMB sequenced it by March and a test was developed in March of 2020. The time frame has been amazing, and they have learned so much in very little time which is truly remarkable. There has been a lot of changes in the way that things have been done and overall people want to know what their doctor says. Distrust is so high and the trust factor needs to be rebuilt.

The folks at the UTMB are hoping that people get more interested in science and that they continue to receive funding for more scientific research.

This press release was produced by the Clear Lake Area Chamber Of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.