Record 7,497 New COVID-19 Cases As Hospital Capacity Dwindles

Wisconsin, again, has set a new high in COVID-19 cases as hospital capacity wanes.

The Department of Health Services reported 7,497 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday afternoon from 22,408 processed tests.

The seven-day case total moved to a new record high of 43,464. September, when Wisconsin’s surge started, accounted for 46,671 cases in its entirety.

“COVID-19 is everywhere in our state. It is bad everywhere, and it is getting every worse everywhere. It is straining hospitals and people are dying,” said DHS deputy secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk during a press briefing Thursday afternoon.

“Statewide only eight percent of [intensive care unit] beds are available,” said Willems Van Dijk. The state has set a new record for active hospitalizations in each of the past 12 days.

State officials continued their theme of noting that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had limited their legal options and that people needed to come together and take personal responsibility to slow the spread in their communities.

“We are getting closer to a vaccine, so let’s pull together for the next two to three months to do what it takes,” she said, imploring people to stay home when possible, wear a mask when they do go out and maintain a distance of six feet from those outside the home.

“The safest thing to do is stay home,” said Governor Tony Evers.

“There is no safe gathering right now unfortunately,” said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, Chief Medical Officer of the DHS Bureau of Communicable Diseases.

Evers said he had a call with Midwest governors this afternoon. They’ll have plenty to discuss.

Chicago, which has a lower per capita case rate than Milwaukee and Wisconsin, announced a stay-at-home advisory order Thursday afternoon. Minnesota is now reporting a case volume at Wisconsin’s level. Iowa has a per-capita rate greater than Wisconsin. Some states have enacted measures to close bars at 10 p.m. “The collaboration we have had has been very helpful,” said Evers.

The seven-day positive case rate, the percentage of tests that confirm a new case of the disease and proxy for if the disease’s spread is growing or slowing, stands at 34.38%. The 14-day average at 32.70%. The 14-day average set a low of 2.69% on June 19th.

Officials have looked for the positive case rate to trend downward to indicate a slowing spread of disease and sufficient testing. Multiple public health benchmarks call for the positive case rate figure to be sustained under five percent.

DHS reported 264 people were newly hospitalized in the past 24 hours in its daily data release. A total of 13,771 people have required hospitalization since the outbreak began, 1,461 in the past week.

“The most important way to prevent this is to prevent the patients from needing the care in the first place,” said Willems Van Dijk of hospital capacity issues. She said the biggest issue hospitals are reporting is staffing shortages caused by having employees quarantined.

“I believe we are getting to the point where hospitals are strained and likely to run out of staff before they run out of physical space,” said Westergaard.

Westergaard said earlier this week that hospitals are reaching a “tipping point” where they might not be able to treat everyone that needs care.

The Wisconsin Hospital Association reported Wednesday that a record 2,102 people were actively hospitalized with a confirmed case of the disease, an increase of 32 over Tuesday and 355 over a week ago. Thirty days ago the total was 1,017. Thursday’s data release, scheduled for 3:30 p.m., was not available by the time of publication.

A record 14 patients were in the Alternate Care Facility in West Allis.

DHS reported 58 deaths Thursday. A total of 2,515 Wisconsin residents have died as a result of the virus, including 636 in Milwaukee County.

An average of 33.57 deaths per day have been reported over the past 30 days. Thirty days ago the rolling average was 10.87.

Since September, Milwaukee County has gone from having the worst per-capita outbreak to the 19th worst in the state, even as its case and hospitalization load has surged to record levels.

Menominee County has recorded 9,972.6 cases per 100,000 residents (up from 9,904.2). Shawano County has recorded 7,624.8 cases per 100,000 residents (up from 7,477). Brown, Oconto, Dodge, Forest, Kewaunee, Winnebago, Calumet, Langlade, Waushara, Outagamie, Fond du Lac, Waupaca, Florence, Marinette, Marquette and Sheboygan counties are the remaining counties leading Milwaukee.

According to DHS data, 5,625.2 out of every 100,000 Milwaukee County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak began (up from 5,515.1).

The statewide average of cases per 100,000 residents rose to 5,075 (up from 4,945.3). Wisconsin has recorded a per-capita rate of 1,310.6 cases per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks according to the DHS activity level report released Wednesday.

Charts and Maps

Confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths by gender

Confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths by race

Confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths by ethnicity

Cases and deaths by county

	Number of confirmed cases	Number of negatives*	Number of probable cases	Number of deaths †	Number of probable deaths ‡	Cases per 100,000 people (counties)	Deaths per 100,000 people (counties)	Case fatality percentage ††
Adams	785	5,557	56	6	1.00	3,830.20	29.3	0.80%
Ashland	458	4,632	18	5	0.00	2,887.20	31.5	1.10%
Barron	2,128	13,524	43	28	0.00	4,638.20	61	1.30%
Bayfield	467	4,551	15	3	0.00	3,071.60	19.7	0.60%
Brown	19,166	99,400	461	118	2.00	7,362.20	45.3	0.60%
Buffalo	507	3,498	11	3	0.00	3,753.10	22.2	0.60%
Burnett	473	4,117	21	7	0.00	3,062.10	45.3	1.50%
Calumet	3,383	14,691	113	20	1.00	6,572.00	38.9	0.60%
Chippewa	3,223	20,752	40	35	2.00	5,018.70	54.5	1.10%
Clark	1,488	7,666	108	23	3.00	4,283.10	66.2	1.50%
Columbia	2,527	20,777	179	9	1.00	4,423.40	15.8	0.40%
Crawford	590	5,520	7	4	0.00	3,563.90	24.2	0.70%
Dane	20,590	254,788	611	57	2.00	3,896.00	10.8	0.30%
Dodge	6,163	30,838	311	51	4.00	6,908.80	57.2	0.80%
Door	1,288	10,207	94	10	0.00	4,591.60	35.6	0.80%
Douglas	1,176	11,371	9	1	0.00	2,680.40	2.3	0.10%
Dunn	1,768	12,640	49	1	0.00	3,948.50	2.2	0.10%
Eau Claire	5,475	33,491	82	34	4.00	5,321.10	33	0.60%
Florence	264	1,243	14	10	0.00	5,971.50	226.2	3.80%
Fond du Lac	6,695	32,358	244	31	1.00	6,476.50	30	0.50%
Forest	619	2,831	36	11	1.00	6,741.50	119.8	1.80%
Grant	2,699	17,872	105	50	1.00	5,153.30	95.5	1.90%
Green	1,302	11,407	22	5	0.00	3,531.90	13.6	0.40%
Green Lake	992	5,674	152	4	0.00	5,197.00	21	0.40%
Iowa	892	7,920	28	4	0.00	3,748.10	16.8	0.40%
Iron	282	1,902	51	5	1.00	4,825.50	85.6	1.80%
Jackson	1,027	8,088	13	2	0.00	4,974.80	9.7	0.20%
Jefferson	3,947	26,817	196	29	1.00	4,661.40	34.2	0.70%
Juneau	1,405	11,548	7	6	0.00	5,221.50	22.3	0.40%
Kenosha	7,140	53,239	731	102	2.00	4,244.20	60.6	1.40%
Kewaunee	1,364	5,512	38	12	0.00	6,607.20	58.1	0.90%
La Crosse	6,018	36,351	196	28	0.00	5,085.60	23.7	0.50%
Lafayette	824	4,822	10	2	0.00	4,880.60	11.8	0.20%
Langlade	1,307	5,193	56	19	3.00	6,608.70	96.1	1.50%
Lincoln	1,392	7,630	51	13	2.00	4,894.20	45.7	0.90%
Manitowoc	3,864	21,466	477	27	4.00	4,814.70	33.6	0.70%
Marathon	7,534	35,381	535	91	10.00	5,591.50	67.5	1.20%
Marinette	2,358	13,398	181	20	0.00	5,759.90	48.9	0.80%
Marquette	881	4,487	95	7	0.00	5,729.00	45.5	0.80%
Menominee	437	3,369	1	2	0.00	9,972.60	45.6	0.50%
Milwaukee	53,129	342,087	3481	636	8.00	5,625.20	67.3	1.20%
Monroe	1,752	13,618	26	8	0.00	3,808.90	17.4	0.50%
Oconto	2,666	12,456	154	20	3.00	7,022.80	52.7	0.80%
Oneida	1,698	12,521	36	19	0.00	4,728.10	52.9	1.10%
Outagamie	11,659	59,147	459	91	0.00	6,343.30	49.5	0.80%
Ozaukee	3,513	27,699	399	29	3.00	3,975.80	32.8	0.80%
Pepin	300	2,052	4	1	0.00	4,082.20	13.6	0.30%
Pierce	1,278	10,973	297	7	2.00	3,069.50	16.8	0.50%
Polk	1,293	13,005	16	4	0.00	2,945.30	9.1	0.30%
Portage	3,738	19,250	116	30	2.00	5,285.70	42.4	0.80%
Price	532	3,988	25	3	0.00	3,852.80	21.7	0.60%
Racine	10,658	83,148	1077	128	3.00	5,460.00	65.6	1.20%
Richland	662	7,257	17	10	0.00	3,737.60	56.5	1.50%
Rock	7,114	53,105	282	58	2.00	4,438.90	36.2	0.80%
Rusk	499	3,377	22	5	0.00	3,433.30	34.4	1.00%
Sauk	2,753	27,090	83	10	0.00	4,391.70	16	0.40%
Sawyer	575	5,894	5	5	0.00	3,470.30	30.2	0.90%
Shawano	3,146	12,842	58	40	1.00	7,624.80	96.9	1.30%
Sheboygan	6,850	33,060	258	41	2.00	5,981.70	35.8	0.60%
St. Croix	3,031	23,932	137	16	0.00	3,437.70	18.1	0.50%
Taylor	765	4,102	43	10	0.00	3,717.20	48.6	1.30%
Trempealeau	1,574	8,738	26	7	0.00	5,366.20	23.9	0.40%
Vernon	762	9,315	6	4	0.00	2,515.90	13.2	0.50%
Vilas	898	6,329	22	9	0.00	4,146.70	41.6	1.00%
Walworth	4,522	30,767	492	40	2.00	4,406.80	39	0.90%
Washburn	382	4,166	10	2	0.00	2,409.60	12.6	0.50%
Washington	6,431	37,042	667	54	3.00	4,781.90	40.2	0.80%
Waukesha	17,509	117,171	1,399	157	3.00	4,392.20	39.4	0.90%
Waupaca	3,168	14,812	313	64	21.00	6,124.00	123.7	2.00%
Waushara	1,541	8,604	25	6	0.00	6,342.10	24.7	0.40%
Winnebago	11,284	59,696	598	90	3.00	6,663.40	53.1	0.80%
Wood	2,808	21,008	164	16	2.00	3,793.30	21.6	0.60%