Dane County confirmed 40 new coronavirus cases today, bringing the county’s total to 5,426. As of this morning, the total number of recovered cases was listed at 4,741.
Dane County’s death toll from COVID-19 remained at 40 today. As of this morning, 26 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in Dane County with eight of those in the ICU.
Today’s highest concentration of cases was among adults in their 20s and teens aged 10-19, making up 82 percent of all new cases today. Teens aged 10-19 alone make up 55 percent of all new cases with 22, while adults in their 20s added 11, or 27.5 percent of all new cases. Adults in their 30s grew by three while children aged 0-9 grew by two. Adults in their 50s and 60s grew by one case each this morning.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s data dashboard, as of 2 pm yesterday, UW testing has confirmed a total of 77 cases, an increase from yesterday’s reported 62. As of this morning, there were 14 additional positive tests for students and one additional positive test for employees. This brings UW’s seven-day average to 8.0 positive cases per day for all cases (UW staff and students) and seven-day percent of positive average of 1.2 percent for all UW students tested on campus. All positive cases from UW are reported in Dane County numbers.
For all of Dane County, the most updated data on positive test percentage for a single day is for August 29, with the positive test percentage reported at 1.9 percent while August 28 is at 1.8 percent. The positive percentage for August 27 has been updated to 1.0 percent and August 26 is now at 2.3. Madison365 expects that these numbers will be adjusted as more negative and positive tests are fully processed and attributed to the appropriate dates in the coming days. The break down for each day can be found on Public Health of Madison and Dane County’s Dashboard.
On Thursday, Public Health of Madison and Dane County updated their Data Snapshot for the week of August 11 – 24 with a look at those past two week’s data including Department of Health Services’ activity level metric. The activity level metrics measures the burden of cases within the last two week period (number of cases per 100,000) and the trajectory – or the percent change in cases from previous to the current week and if that trajectory is statistically significant.
According to the update, the current activity level for the county remains high. Dane County reportedly still has high burden of cases with 110 cases per 100,000 – which is slightly lower than last week’s 110.5 cases per 100,000 – but the trajectory has not significantly changed statically in the number of cases from the most recent seven days compared to the prior seven-day period. We have remained high since June 24th, a little less than two weeks from when DHS started to measure activity level by county. On June 13, when it was first being measured, we were at medium.
For those dates, Dane County has averaged 41 cases per day, which is lower than last week’s average of 42 cases. However, this number is still too high for the Forward Dane reopening plan to move forward, and is coded as red on the data snapshot metrics. For those dates, the percentage of those who test positive that have been contacted within 48 hours of their reported results decreased from last week’s 83 percent to 79 percent. This does keep the metric in the yellow, however. Though last week’s snapshot reported that the percentage of those who tested positive who did not know where they would have gotten COVID from was at 41 percent, this week it increased to 40 percent keeping this metric red as well.
Communities of color are over-represented in hospitalizations. According to the snapshot, six percent of all people tested for the weeks of August 11 – August 24 identified as Hispanic/Latinx, who are also six percent of the population. However, they are 10 percent of all new cases for those dates and 25 percent of hospitalizations. Black people though six percent of the population in the County but continue to be only five percent of all tests for August 11 – August 24 (so underrepresented in all testing), are eight percent of all new cases for those dates and 17 percent of hospitalizations. Those who are Asian were only four percent of all tests during the last two weeks while seven percent of the total population for the county and make up five percent of all positive tests and eight percent of all hospitalizations for August 11 – 25.
For context, Public Health of Madison and Dane County reported specifically on UW cases for those August 11 – 25 dates. As students, staff and faculty return to campus with students moving back in as early as August 15, Public Health began to track COVID positives for students, faculty and staff as early as July 28. Currently, during this 14 day period, 46 students and 8 staff have tested positive accounting for 9 percent of Dane County’s total cases.
Yesterday morning, Madison365 updated our interactive Dane County Coronavirus Map. The map will be updated weekly.
