State reports 1,369 virus cases Friday: Who is sick?
Nationwide, new cases of COVID-19 have decreased, as has the percentage of new tests coming back positive for the virus.
But in Wisconsin, it’s been a different story.
Fueled by a surge in new cases among younger Wisconsinites, as well as regional hot spots, recent unsettling trends continued in Friday’s update from state health officials.
The bad news ended what has been a terrible week by the most common measures used to track the virus’ activity.
On Tuesday, 17.6% of newly confirmed test results were positive for COVID-19, the highest portion since statewide testing began in earnest.
Thursday, the state saw a record 1,547 positive cases confirmed in a single day.
Friday brought 1,369 more positives, the third-most yet, with 13.8% of tests positive.
The seven-day average of new cases was 985 on Friday, and 12.5% of tests processed in the past seven days had come back positive.
That rate of new cases might have seemed astronomical in spring, when Gov. Tony Evers shuttered schools and issued a safer-at-home order that was later struck down by the state’s Supreme Court.
Recent test positivity is also much higher than it was during a surge of cases in late July, when Evers became the final Democratic governor to require that masks be worn indoors.
According to covidexitstrategy.org, which tracks recent COVID-19 activity in U.S. states, Wisconsin entered Friday as one of 16 states with “uncontrolled spread,” or the worst possible rating.
While new cases had decreased 14% nationally over the past two weeks, they increased by 42% here. Wisconsin’s recent positive test percentage was more than twice the U.S. rate (5.2%) and had surpassed other notoriously hard-hit places, such as Florida.
On the other hand, the number of inpatients in Wisconsin hospitals has been fairly stable in most places, at a level well below summer peaks. The state’s hospitals reported 304 inpatients with confirmed cases on Thursday afternoon, compared to 414 on Aug. 10. Ninety-three were in intensive care, or less than half as many as there were in early April.
Deaths haven’t spiked, either, averaging six over the past week, compared to 13 per day in early June. So, what’s behind the sudden increase in cases, and why hasn’t it brought more hospitalizations and deaths?
Young Wisconsinites account for half of new cases
There’s at least one simple explanation for the seeming contradiction between the spiking numbers of new cases and the relatively low level of bad outcomes: As we saw during the late July surge, new cases are again skewing younger, where rates of hospitalization and death are lower.
The 10-19 and 20-29 age groups have accounted for more than half of cases in the past week, after K-12 and college students returned to classrooms around the state.
In the seven days ending Friday, there were 1,711 newly confirmed cases in people ages 10-19, compared to 732 in the seven days before that.
For 20-somethings, there were 1,977 cases this week, up from 1,314 cases last week.
In many other age groups, including 30-somethings, 40-somethings, 60somethings and 80-somethings, there were actually fewer new cases this week, even as Wisconsin set records overall.
Asked about the recent trends, University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist Patrick Remington said there was no question they were significant, and that their cause, specifically, was college-age residents.
“The story is 18- to 24-year-olds want to get it over with,” Remington said, pointing to a state health department chart based on preliminary data that shows cases in that age range jutting upward as all others fall — including people younger than 18.
“They are the aberration,” Remington said. “They are the reason for this next wave.”
Younger people are far less likely to experience severe cases of the disease: Only 1% of confirmed cases in the 10-19 category have resulted in hospitalization, with zero deaths. For 20-somethings, 2% have been hospitalized, and nine have died.
Remington said the elderly and people with chronic conditions have gotten the message about the risks of COVID-19 and the importance of social distancing, mask wearing and hygiene. But some young people may have a different perception, he said, when they look at the data and assess their own risk.
“They’re willing to hop on that ride and give it a try and spin the dial,” he said.
What they may not realize, Remington said, is the seriousness of that risk spread across a large population. For example: If one in 1,000 people died at a sold-out Camp Randall Stadium, that would amount to 80 deaths and be rightly labeled a tragedy.
“That’s what happens when you take a very small number and multiply it by a very big number,” he said. “You get real people.”
Ajay Sethi, another UW-Madison epidemiologist, said many students “are doing the right thing. There are just a few that aren’t. That’s what causes this.”
Those who have at-risk family or friends, or those who know somebody who died, might better understand the risk of COVID-19 transmission, Sethi said.
Absent that personal connection, Sethi said, it can be hard for people to get the message about the severity of risk. It took generations, he said, for people to start reflexively putting on their seat belts. COVID-19 has only been known to us a matter of months, and the risks have been described through “mixed messages,” he said.
“That doesn’t help,” he said. “And the politicization of everything certainly doesn’t help, either.”
Some counties have been hot spots; Milwaukee fairly level
Of the state’s seven Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition regions, the Fox Valley had the most cases per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks, at 300.
Municipalities there are shattering records for daily and weekly case rates: The city of Appleton has reported a fourth of its 913 total cases in the last two weeks, and in Winnebago County, health officials confirmed 74 new cases Thursday — more than double the county’s last single-day high.
While hospitalizations were level statewide, the Fox Valley region was reporting a record 46 inpatients as of Thursday, nearly twice the amount there were a month ago.
“My concern is, how bad do things have to get with our hospital systems before we take this situation more seriously?” Winnebago County Health Officer Doug Gieryn said.
He and Kurt Eggebrecht, health officer for the city of Appleton, both noted decreased compliance with the statewide mask mandate, less physical distancing and more mass gatherings as leading factors in the area’s climbing case numbers.
Gieryn said if hospitals reach a straining point, “it may be too late to come back.”
In Winnebago County, contact tracers are struggling to keep up. They’ve already had to make their investigations less thorough to get through new cases at an adequate rate, Gieryn said, relying more on the person who was infected to let close contacts know.
Gieryn said the area also needs expanded testing capacity and for Evers’ statewide mask mandate, which is set to expire at the end of September, to be not just extended, but beefed up to rectify adherence issues.
“It’s just unfortunate that in order to get the level of participation we need to have a meaningful impact, we have to have mandates,” he said.
Statewide, the counties with the most new cases this week compared to the week before were Dane (986 more than were reported the week before, a 210% jump), Walworth (146, or 159%), Brown (118, or 28%), Eau Claire (114, or 112%) and Grant (85, or 472%).
Forest County had the highest per capita rate of new cases over the past seven days, with 389 per 100,000. Dane, with 268, had the second-most.
In Dane County, where UW-Madison moved classes online for two weeks because of the high incidence of students testing positive, 22% of people who tested in the past week were positive.
Forty of Wisconsin’s 72 counties were in double-digits for test positivity, and 13 surpassed 20%.
The highest rates of positivity this week were in Portage (38%), Florence (31%), Forest (28%), Walworth (23%), Brown (23%) and Kewaunee (23%) counties.
Milwaukee County, by contrast, had 8% test positivity.
Since the start of the pandemic, Milwaukee County has had the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 infection, at one out of every 37 residents. But it’s played a much lesser role in the recent surge.
In fact, Milwaukee County saw 78 fewer cases confirmed this week than last week, per DHS data.
Ben Weston, director of medical services at the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management, said in a briefing with reporters Thursday that recent county trends were “moving in a fairly promising direction.”
But “that could change next week,” he said.
“We know that back-to-school, whether it’s college, high school, elementary school, is something we haven’t gone through before, locally or as a country. So that’s going to be a change for us and we’re going to have to monitor closely and see what changes.”
Sophie Carson contributed to this report.
Contact Matt Piper at (920) 810-7164 or mpiper@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @matthew_piper.
“We know that back-to-school, whether it’s college, high school, elementary school, is something we haven’t gone through before, locally or as a country. So that’s going to be a change for us and we’re going to have to monitor closely and see what changes.”
Ben Weston Director of medical services at the Milwaukee County Office of Emergency Management