COVID-19 Still At High Levels, But Declining

The level of COVID-19 in Milwaukee County continues to go down, according to a recent report.

The number of new weekly cases shows this decline. This past week, Feb. 9 – 15, there were 752 cases of COVID-19 in the county, compared to 1,346 the week prior. This same trend in new cases is present in the county’s population of children.

This data comes from a weekly report produced by epidemiologists and faculty from the Medical College of Wisconsin and UW-Milwaukee and public health officials.

Hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. This past week there were 493 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county. The week prior there were 677. There were 3 reported deaths due to COVID-19 this past week, compared to 20 the week prior.

The positivity rate, however, is holding steady. This metric measures the percentage of tests that come back positive for COVID-19. It was measured at 10.7% both this past week and the week prior. But the number of people accessing testing has been dropping in recent weeks. So this rate comes from a smaller sample size than previous weeks.

The transmission rate, which measures how many people, on average, will catch COVID-19 from a single case, remained below 1.0 as of Feb. 8. This indicates community suppression of the disease.

Still, during a media briefing Tuesday, Dr. Ben Weston, chief health policy advisor for the county, noted that while disease appears to be declining there is still a lot of it going around. At other times in the pandemic, this number of weekly new cases, or the number of people hospitalized would have been breaking records.

A countywide vaccination report as of Feb. 14 shows 63.6% of county residents eligible for the vaccine (five years and older) are completely vaccinated, and 68% have received at least one dose.

The percentage of residents that are eligible for a booster (12 years and older) and received it was 57.9%.

Read the weekly report here. Read the children’s report here. Read the vaccine report here.