Dane County has confirmed 40 more coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the largest one-day jump since the pandemic began. That makes an increase of 70 cases over the past two days and 173 over the past week.
Of the 40, 10 are Latino.
Further, a trend of younger people testing positive has continued. Of the 40 new cases today, three are under the age of 10, 6 are aged 10-19, 14 are in their 20s and eight are in their 30s.
Public Health Madison Dane County said of the 70 new cases identified over the weekend, only one was connected to a previously known cluster.
The increase puts the cases per day — one of nine metrics used to gauge the county’s readiness to reopen businesses and allow larger gatherings — outside the acceptable range. The Public Health Madison Dane County (PHMDC) website says the 14-day average of new cases per day should be under four and must be under 20 to move to Phase 2 of the Forward Dane plan. The current 14-day average is 21.21.
Phase 2 of the Forward Dane plan began one week ago, on June 15. Bars and restaurants can currently be open to 50 percent capacity, and gatherings of up to 50 indoors and up to 100 outdoors are allowed.
The Forward Dane plan does not include procedures to roll back reopening or return to more restrictive rules.
“As far as criteria to return to prior phases: we’re looking at levels of disease activity (burden, trajectory) and health system factors but these are still under discussion,” PHDMC representative Christy Vogt said in an email to Madison365. Vogt later clarified that “we’ve been discussing these criteria for a few weeks, and these discussions are not a result of this bump in cases. The discussions are about when moving to a prior phase might be warranted, and it’s not specifically about phase 1.”
We will have a full update of statewide coronavirus statistics this afternoon.
