TAMPA, Fla. — A team of infectious disease doctors from Tampa General Hospital and USF Morsani College of Medicine are working with the Florida Senate to create a safe plan and adjustments to protect lawmakers from COVID-19 during the 2021 legislative session.
The Tampa General Hospital Prevention Response Outreach team, or TPRO, is in Tallahassee this week to start the work. TPRO helped set up safe COVID-19 systems for TECO, the Straz Center, the Lightning, and Hillsborough County Schools.
The first, and current step, is evaluation.
“It's very crowded in there. It's a building that was built in the 70s. It doesn't have windows you can open, you know, there's no fresh air coming in. So there's a lot of engineering controls that will have to be evaluated, studied and optimized," explained Dr. Charles Lockwood, Dean of the USF Morsani College of Medicine.
TPRO will also look at more human involved systems, like how to handle groups and people coming in and out of the building. “Where to serve food, when to serve food, how to avoid unnecessary excess contact, without disrupting the processes that you're trying to reactivate," Dr. Lockwood said.
People will be back at the state senate offices after the election in November, but the full legislative session starts in March. A lot can change by then, but Dr. Lockwood believes that things will be in much better shape when it comes to combating COVID-19.
“If through combinations of natural immunity, and vaccine-related immunity, we're approaching herd immunity, or at least we can ensure that everybody that works in the building is immunized. Then we should be in very good shape,” Dr. Lockwood said. “It would certainly make things much easier. And I have a strong suspicion that's where we'll be.”
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