As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year, infection rates, hospitalizations and mortality, for the moment at least,  seem to be waning. People around the globe are cautiously and optimistically returning to their lives, going to their place of businesses or schools in person, dining in restaurants, traveling, attending religious services and more.

UT Health San Antonio faculty, residents, fellows, students and staff lead the way in mobilizing their resources in health education, clinical care and research to provide community outreach, education and care during this unpredictable and unprecedented time. This includes taking part in groundbreaking research that has resulted in a new potential vaccines to prevent infections, novel treatments and conducting clinical trials to study the effects of ongoing or recurring symptoms after a patient’s initial battle with COVID.

Infectious disease faculty members Thomas Patterson, MD, and Barbara Taylor, MD, MS,  are leading a federally funded national study that seeks to understand the effects of long-term COVID. Dr. Patterson, who is chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases and leads COVID-19 infectious disease care for University Health, is principal investigator of the PREVAIL South Texas trial. Dr. Taylor, who serves as a co-principal investigator for the trial, is associate professor of medicine and assistant dean for the MD/MPH program in the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine. She is an infectious diseases clinician and researcher at University Health.

COVID: A glimpse ahead

“We’re entering a phase where COVID is becoming endemic in our community, which means that we expect continued COVID cases as we go into the future. We will likely see future surges and new variants over the next year. However, we’re in a much better place than we have been as far as tools to combat COVID,” Dr. Taylor said. “We have vaccines that, even with the new variants, still protect against severe disease, hospitalization and death. We also have new treatments becoming available, including pills, which can help people at risk for COVID complications from developing severe disease.”

The impact on student learning

Much like society as a whole, the pandemic also affected learning for students, post docs and trainees across campus. This required developing a carefully planned schedule of hybrid in-person and virtual learning, in accordance with local, state and federal guidelines. “I think we’ve learned a lot about which virtual learning experiences can work and which doesn’t,” Taylor said. “In some ways, the pandemic made us appreciate even more the value of face-to-face sessions with students. We’ve gotten better at disseminating information and pushing past passive, lecture-based learning to creating valuable experiences and interactions, which I feel is the best way to learn.”

Moving forward with hope

While what will happen during the third year of the pandemic is still unclear, Dr. Taylor remains hopeful. “For me, it has been phenomenal to see the way that everyone has worked together, under stress, to collaborate in COVID response. It requires collaboration across all sorts of divides that usually exist in many ways, such as researchers working side-by-side with clinicians and nurses in the hospital, public health officials working with medical students and the food bank, community health workers partnering with information technology folks and mobile vaccine outreach teams. It’s been very inspiring to see how innovative we can all be when we work together to serve our community.”