After closing for coronavirus, Milwaukee County Zoo reopening on a limited basis
Park has limited hours; school welcomes athletes
Wisconsin reported no new coronavirus-related deaths Monday — a first since May 17 — as the Milwaukee County Zoo and the University of Wisconsin announced plans to welcome back some visitors and students.
Starting Saturday, the zoo will have a daily cap of visitors, who must make reservations ahead of time and will have access only to outside habitats.
Depending on weather and the animals’ care, visitors will have the chance to see elephants, giraffes, tigers, flamingos, caribou, grizzly bears, harbor seals, alpaca and more.
Snack shops and the zoo’s train, carousel, sky glider and some bathrooms will also be open.
This first phase of the zoo’s reopening also limits hours: The zoo will open at 10 a.m. and close at 3 p.m., with 1:30 p.m. as the final entry time.
Zoo employees will wear masks, and visitors will also be required to do so. Anyone who has forgotten theirs will be issued a paper mask or can buy a mask at the zoo’s gift shop.
Badgers returning to campus
Three months ago, UW-Madison was the first university in the state to move instruction entirely online to curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Now, with summer semester still online, it’s welcoming some student-athletes back to campus. Football and volleyball players can return voluntarily this week for health assessments and COVID-19 testing.
Next week’s strength and conditioning activities will all take place in the Forward Center inside Camp Randall Stadium and in the weight room at the McClain Center. Other facilities, including the Kohl Center, will remain closed.
The number of athletes inside each room will be restricted to mitigate risk of spreading COVID-19. Athletes will be screened daily (including a temperature check) before entering the facilities.
The athletes will be required to wear masks except during conditioning activities. Those with suspected symptoms will be instructed to self-isolate while awaiting test results, and they’ll be required to sit out for 72 hours after receiving a negative result.
Positive coronavirus tests remain low percentage of overall
Wisconsin health officials reported 203 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, the lowest the state has seen in a week.
It’s only the sixth day without a recorded death since Wisconsinites began dying of complications from the coronavirus in late March.
The Department of Health Services website showed 646 total deaths due to COVID-19 Monday — actually a decrease of one from the day prior.
“The total cumulative death count went down by one as we had to make a correction and remove a duplicate,” Elizabeth Goodsitt, a DHS spokeswoman, said in an email.
The DHS site notes that as individual cases are investigated by local health departments, “there may be corrections to the status and details of cases that result in changes” to the data.
Of the 7,589 tests processed since Sunday, 203 came back positive, or 2.7% of the total tests run. It’s a slight uptick from yesterday’s percentage of positive tests, following a decline of three straight days.
Of the 354,291 Wisconsin residents who have now been tested for coronavirus, 333,253 have come back as negative as of Monday. The state reports that nearly 70% of the positive cases have now recovered.
The Wisconsin Hospital Association reported Monday that 322 patients across the state were hospitalized with COVID-19, 110 of them in the intensive care unit. Just over 200 inpatients were awaiting results of a coronavirus test.
Worldwide, more than 7 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported, nearly 2 million of them in the U.S., according to the case dashboard at Johns Hopkins University.