Wisconsin Chief Medical Officer: Guidelines Haven’t Changed For Those Not Fully Vaccinated

COVID-19 Cases Are Down But Health Officials Say Pandemic Isn't Over Yet

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Justin Bishop watches as Registered Nurse Jennifer Reyes inoculates him with the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
In this May 14, 2021, file photo, Justin Bishop, 13, watches as Registered Nurse Jennifer Reyes inoculates him with the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at the Mount Sinai South Nassau Vaxmobile parked at the De La Salle School in Freeport, N.Y. U.S. healthy officials say that most fully vaccinated Americans can skip testing for COVID-19, even if they were exposed to someone infected. Mary Altaffer/AP Photo

New reports of COVID-19 cases are on the decline in Wisconsin, based on the latest data published by the state Department of Health Services.

DHS reported 282 new cases of the disease Thursday, bringing the average for the past seven days to 285 daily cases. One week ago, the average was 377 daily cases. Daily new cases have been declining since a spike in mid-April, when the average was more than 800 per day.

Though Wisconsin’s COVID-19 data is trending favorably, the pandemic isn’t over yet, said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer with the DHS Bureau of Communicable Diseases. More of the state’s residents are being vaccinated against the disease every day, but there are still many Wisconsinites who aren’t yet protected, he said.

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“The public health recommendations for people who have not yet been fully vaccinated remain the same,” he said.

A total of 5,111,247 doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered in Wisconsin as of Thursday, with 79 percent of Wisconsinites age 65 and up having completed the vaccination series. According to DHS, 17 percent of the state’s 12- to 15-year-olds have had their first doses of vaccine. That age group became eligible May 13.

As of Thursday, 2,416,757 people in Wisconsin, or 41.5 percent of the population, have received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second Pfizer or Moderna dose or two weeks after Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine.

Increasing rates of vaccination have provided a sense of hope after a yearlong pandemic that has claimed the lives of at least 7,040 people in Wisconsin. There were 37 new deaths from COVID-19 reported Thursday, though they date back as far as November. The deaths were discovered through DHS’s quality assurance practices. The seven-day average for newly reported deaths is two.

DHS updated its online data reporting system Thursday and announced it will no longer publish daily COVID-19 case data during the weekends.

“Today we released the updated Wisconsin summary statistics dashboard, which provides an at-a-glance view of important COVID-19 information for Wisconsin. The dashboard now includes vaccination rates and COVID-19 disease activity, as well as case and death metrics that use seven-day averages. These seven-day averages help smooth out day-to-day fluctuations in our data that may occur due to testing and reporting patterns,” said Traci DeSalvo, director of the DHS Bureau of Communicable Diseases.

Other DHS data from Thursday include:

  • 609,561 total cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
  • 2.3 percent of COVID-19 tests have come back positive over the last seven days.
  • 221 people were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Wednesday, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
  • Daily testing capacity remains at 59,273, though preliminary statistics show fewer than 13,000 people were tested Wednesday.

Coronavirus rates vary from county to county. In order to track COVID-19 activity levels, DHS looks at the number of new cases per a county’s population over a 14-day period — and whether there’s an upward or downward trend in new cases. Activity levels range from “very high,” “high,” “medium,” to “low.”

As of Wednesday, DHS data showed the state had no counties with a “very high” level, while the majority of Wisconsin counties had “high” levels of activity. There were growing case trajectories in one county and shrinking trajectories in 12. Wisconsin’s overall COVID-19 activity level is “medium.”

For more about COVID-19, visit Coronavirus in Wisconsin.

Editor’s note: WPR originally reported 272 new cases of COVID-19 and a seven-day average of 282. After more data analysis, those numbers have been updated.