Dr. John Raymond Sr. has served as president and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Medical College of Wisconsin since July 2010. It’s the nation’s third-largest private medical school, and its more than 1,600 faculty physicians constitute one of the largest medical groups in a state where COVID-19 cases have surged in recent weeks. Raymond talked with Assistant Managing Editor David May about lessons learned during the pandemic and priorities for the months ahead. The following is an edited transcript.
MH: Can you talk about Wisconsin’s COVID-19 caseload? It’s recently been one of the nation’s hot spots for surges in new cases.
Raymond: Like many parts of the Midwest, Wisconsin is experiencing rapid community spread of COVID-19, especially in the north central and northeastern regions of the state. In addition to a surge of new cases, the positivity rates and the reproductive numbers and measures of contagiousness are very unfavorable. So this