41 of 72 Counties Have Critically High COVID-19 Spread

There are some reasons for optimism when looking at Wisconsin’s COVID-19 statistics, but an abundance of reasons to be pessimistic that the situation on the ground is improving.

The number of new cases is falling, but so is the amount of people being newly tested. The latter isn’t necessarily a negative, but the percentage of tests that return a positive result remains near record levels.

The state’s lagging indicators also present a mixed message. The number of people actively hospitalized is falling as is the number of people newly hospitalized, both an unquestionably good thing for the state’s strained hospital system. But the daily death average continues to set record highs.

It will take two almost two weeks to understand if any surge results from the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Department of Health Services reported 3,777 new cases on Wednesday from 9,983 processed tests.

The seven-day case total stands at 25,648, below last Thursday’s record 45,946. September, when Wisconsin’s surge started, accounted for 46,671 cases in its entirety. The seven-day testing total stands at 71,715, below November 18th’s record rolling total of 133,019 tests. The testing total is filtered to only include individuals who were tested for the first time or have been tested previously but are receiving their first positive diagnosis.

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 35.76%, below the record of 36.33% set on November 13th. The 14-day average is 33.48%. 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 197 people were newly hospitalized in the past 24 hours in its daily data release. A total of 17,569 people have required hospitalization since the outbreak began, 1,112 in the past week.

The Wisconsin Hospital Association reported that 1,780 people were actively hospitalized with a confirmed case of the disease, a decrease of 47 from the day before and 112 from a week ago. Thirty days ago the total was 1,648.

DHS reported 82 new deaths. A total of 3,502 Wisconsin residents have died as a result of the virus, including 756 in Milwaukee County.

The 30-day average daily death total now stands at a record average of 48.4 Thirty days ago the rolling average was 22.6.

Since September, Milwaukee County has gone from having the worst per-capita outbreak to the 21st worst in the state, even as its case and hospitalization load has surged to record levels. The county fell as low as 26th in early November.

Menominee County has recorded 13,007.8 cases per 100,000 residents (up from 12,848). Dodge County has recorded 9,480.4 cases per 100,000 residents (up from 9,425.5). Shawano, Brown, Oconto, Kewaunee, Jackson, Fond du Lac, Trempealeau, Forest, Calumet, Sheboygan, Langlade, Winnebago, Barron, Eau Claire, Outagamie, Chippewa, Crawford and Florence counties are the remaining counties leading Milwaukee.

According to DHS data, 7,388.8 out of every 100,000 Milwaukee County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak began (up from 7,310.2).

The statewide average of cases per 100,000 residents rose to 6,834.2 (up from 6,768.9). Wisconsin has recorded a per-capita rate of 1,094.1 cases per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks according to the DHS activity level report released Wednesday. That’s down from the record 1,519.4 reported November 18th.

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	1,071	6,133	73	7	1	5,225.7	34.2	0.7%
Ashland	697	5,330	28	9	0	4,393.9	56.7	1.3%
Barron	3,688	15,466	70	41	0	8,038.4	89.4	1.1%
Bayfield	698	5,265	18	14	0	4,590.9	92.1	2.0%
Brown	22,857	106,541	867	139	10	8,780.0	53.4	0.6%
Buffalo	828	3,987	15	4	0	6,129.2	29.6	0.5%
Burnett	790	4,824	82	13	0	5,114.3	84.2	1.6%
Calumet	4,086	16,254	226	26	1	7,937.7	50.5	0.6%
Chippewa	4,921	23,146	58	53	2	7,662.7	82.5	1.1%
Clark	2,215	8,507	192	42	3	6,375.8	120.9	1.9%
Columbia	3,531	22,714	202	12	1	6,180.9	21.0	0.3%
Crawford	1,318	6,211	28	8	0	7,961.3	48.3	0.6%
Dane	27,830	276,346	788	102	3	5,265.9	19.3	0.4%
Dodge	8,457	33,452	423	74	4	9,480.4	83.0	0.9%
Door	1,612	11,274	121	11	0	5,746.7	39.2	0.7%
Douglas	2,138	13,804	129	6	0	4,873.0	13.7	0.3%
Dunn	2,863	14,599	123	13	0	6,393.9	29.0	0.5%
Eau Claire	7,909	38,383	143	59	8	7,686.6	57.3	0.7%
Florence	333	1,334	19	12	0	7,532.2	271.4	3.6%
Fond du Lac	8,569	35,343	469	50	6	8,289.4	48.4	0.6%
Forest	733	3,346	45	18	2	7,983.0	196.0	2.5%
Grant	3,528	19,389	281	64	2	6,736.2	122.2	1.8%
Green	1,739	12,578	29	5	1	4,717.3	13.6	0.3%
Green Lake	1,192	6,151	255	6	2	6,244.8	31.4	0.5%
Iowa	1,315	8,908	46	5	1	5,525.4	21.0	0.4%
Iron	363	2,082	65	10	4	6,211.5	171.1	2.8%
Jackson	1,755	8,860	20	5	0	8,501.3	24.2	0.3%
Jefferson	5,426	29,292	394	39	1	6,408.0	46.1	0.7%
Juneau	1,937	12,507	10	7	0	7,198.6	26.0	0.4%
Kenosha	9,710	58,927	1,089	153	5	5,771.8	90.9	1.6%
Kewaunee	1,713	5,904	58	17	0	8,297.8	82.3	1.0%
La Crosse	8,209	40,943	302	37	0	6,937.2	31.3	0.5%
Lafayette	1,095	5,238	44	4	0	6,485.8	23.7	0.4%
Langlade	1,558	5,659	91	29	7	7,877.8	146.6	1.9%
Lincoln	1,986	8,406	98	30	13	6,982.6	105.5	1.5%
Manitowoc	4,980	23,382	689	37	4	6,205.3	46.1	0.7%
Marathon	9,926	40,040	815	126	17	7,366.7	93.5	1.3%
Marinette	3,012	14,267	253	29	0	7,357.5	70.8	1.0%
Marquette	1,032	4,872	132	15	0	6,710.9	97.5	1.5%
Menominee	570	3,571	2	8	0	13,007.8	182.6	1.4%
Milwaukee	69,786	376,779	5,014	756	13	7,388.8	80.0	1.1%
Monroe	2,683	15,037	30	14	0	5,832.9	30.4	0.5%
Oconto	3,177	13,530	212	28	3	8,368.9	73.8	0.9%
Oneida	2,346	13,179	60	34	1	6,532.5	94.7	1.4%
Outagamie	13,854	64,862	889	133	0	7,537.5	72.4	1.0%
Ozaukee	4,891	30,950	618	36	4	5,535.3	40.7	0.7%
Pepin	497	2,399	5	2	0	6,762.8	27.2	0.4%
Pierce	2,204	12,970	400	19	4	5,293.6	45.6	0.9%
Polk	2,236	14,887	19	15	0	5,093.4	34.2	0.7%
Portage	4,770	21,351	219	37	2	6,745.0	52.3	0.8%
Price	751	4,393	40	4	0	5,438.9	29.0	0.5%
Racine	14,288	88,487	1,409	177	6	7,319.6	90.7	1.2%
Richland	891	7,739	20	13	0	5,030.5	73.4	1.5%
Rock	9,553	58,533	446	90	3	5,960.8	56.2	0.9%
Rusk	904	3,880	26	7	0	6,219.9	48.2	0.8%
Sauk	3,637	29,762	120	19	0	5,801.9	30.3	0.5%
Sawyer	921	6,550	11	7	0	5,558.6	42.2	0.8%
Shawano	3,723	13,818	180	50	4	9,023.3	121.2	1.3%
Sheboygan	9,254	36,400	319	62	2	8,081.0	54.1	0.7%
St. Croix	4,417	27,491	268	21	0	5,009.7	23.8	0.5%
Taylor	1,222	4,614	126	10	4	5,937.8	48.6	0.8%
Trempealeau	2,451	9,732	41	22	0	8,356.1	75.0	0.9%
Vernon	1,171	10,541	7	12	0	3,866.3	39.6	1.0%
Vilas	1,287	6,890	36	13	0	5,942.9	60.0	1.0%
Walworth	6,127	33,622	1,052	53	2	5,970.9	51.6	0.9%
Washburn	726	4,875	50	5	0	4,579.6	31.5	0.7%
Washington	9,059	41,129	1,097	72	5	6,736.0	53.5	0.8%
Waukesha	26,945	131,548	2,174	210	11	6,759.2	52.7	0.8%
Waupaca	3,715	16,033	511	86	30	7,181.4	166.2	2.3%
Waushara	1,758	9,141	79	10	0	7,235.2	41.2	0.6%
Winnebago	13,285	64,460	1,319	117	4	7,845.0	69.1	0.9%
Wood	4,371	23,799	251	29	5	5,904.7	39.2	0.7%