Wisconsin health officials announce second confirmed case
State health officials announced Monday that a second person in Wisconsin has contracted the new coronavirus that arose in China late last year.
A resident of Pierce County in western Wisconsin was exposed while traveling within the U.S. and is isolated at home, according to a release from the state Department of Health
Services sent Monday evening.
Local and state health officials will work to determine those who have been in contact with the patient to quarantine them if necessary, the release said.
Wisconsin had been testing
12 people for the COVID-19 virus as of Monday morning. Thirty-one others had already tested negative. One test had previously come back positive; that person has since recovered.
Earlier Monday, state public health officials walked back previous guidance on testing and announced that doctors will no longer need state approval to order a test.
“We need to test a lot more people than we have been,” said Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases at the DHS.
Last week, the state hygiene lab in Madison and the Milwaukee Health Department both got materials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct tests in-house. The state lab can perform about 100 tests a day; the city’s Health Department can perform 25 to 30.
Officials said neither site is reporting a backlog, but on Monday, they announced that two commercial labs with clinics in Wisconsin — Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp — also will offer the test.
The additional labs are meant to handle “more aggressive” efforts to find new cases and determine when and where possible transmissions have occurred, Westergaard said.
Doctors can now use their judgment to determine whether a patient should have a test for the coronavirus and should still prioritize those with a relevant travel history, exposure to a confirmed case and people who are hospitalized with respiratory issues that have no other known cause.
The DHS is still asking that health care providers report the number of COVID-19 tests they’re ordering and the results of those tests to the state.
The DHS website had previously listed the number of pending cases as well as confirmed positive and negative cases. Going forward it will report only confirmed cases.
The CDC has also altered its criteria for who can be tested, due to community spread of the disease — meaning people who did not travel to the original affected areas have contracted it. Now,
“We need to test a lot more people than we have been.” Ryan Westergaard Chief medical officer of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases at the DHS
anyone with a doctor’s approval can get the test if they show symptoms of fever, cough or difficulty breathing — an allowance that some experts have worried could overwhelm hospital systems and clinics, especially in the throes of flu season.
The state’s first confirmed case, announced a month ago, was a Dane County resident who had previously traveled to China. After several weeks in isolation at home, the patient has recovered.
The U.S. has reported more than 600 confirmed cases and 22 deaths as of Monday, according to the global case dashboard at Johns Hopkins University. A majority of those deaths have occurred in King County, Washington, where officials now believe the disease had been circulating for weeks.
Community spread cases have also been identified in Illinois and California, and the number of states with confirmed cases is growing, supporting officials’ beliefs that it will continue to make its way throughout the country. Public health officials in Milwaukee have said there is little doubt the virus will appear in the state’s largest city.
Tests conducted at the state lab and at the Milwaukee Health Department are fee-exempt and the state insurance commissioner has asked Wisconsin insurance companies to remove cost barriers related to testing and treatment for the virus.
Health professionals advise practicing basic health tips, like washing hands, covering one’s face when coughing or sneezing and remaining home while sick.
Confirmed cases worldwide surpassed 113,000 Monday, the majority of them still in China.