Dane County Executive Joe Parisi is calling on citizens and the University of Wisconsin to “rally together” to get the spread of coronavirus under control as 515 new cases were reported today, shattering previous single-day records.
“Our community is experiencing its first sustained, significant surge of illness since this terrible pandemic began. The task before all of us is great, as we are facing a public health emergency. We will have some incredibly difficult and sad weeks ahead if we don’t rally together now and stop this deeply disturbing trend,” Parisi said in a statement shortly after Public Health Madison & Dane County posted data indicating the sharp increase in cases.
Parisi said the “vast majority” of new cases are in people affiliated with the University, which has canceled in-person classes for today and tomorrow, placed two residence halls in quarantine and moved to all-online instruction for two weeks beginning Monday.
“We need the assistance of the University,” Parisi wrote, noting that even the 100 contact tracers currently employed by the county can’t keep up with the cases coming from the university. Of additional challenge, a number of the young people who public health staff try to contact are not being helpful or forthcoming about whom they have been in contact with, complicating the necessary work to help limit community spread. Detailed, effective contact tracing is critical, but we need those who test positive to cooperate if Public Health contacts them.”
The 515 new coronavirus cases this morning brings the county’s total case count to 7,012. As of this morning, the total number of recovered cases was listed at 5,832 while 17 percent of all cases, or 1,139, are currently active.
Most of the 515 new cases were attributed to tests processed September 9, with 456 positive cases reported for that date. This shatters the record for a single day increase, which was 166. Positive results attributed to tests processed September 8 grew to 70 cases from 16.
Case counts by age for cases were primarily focused on those group in ages 10-19 with 62 percent of all new cases and a total of 321. Adults in their 20s grew by 147 new cases and were 28.5 percent of all tests. This jump in cases comes on the heels of UW Madison moving all in person classes to remote classes and quarantining two dorms last night.
Dane County’s death toll from COVID-19 remained at 41 today. As of this morning, 27 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in Dane County, with 9 of those in the ICU. The total number of Dane County residents ever to be hospitalized for COVID-19 is now at 342.
Dane County’s seven-day average for cases is now at 183 for September 9th while the 14-day average is now 121 cases per day. The Forward Dane reopening plan requires that the daily new case average fall below 20 before moving to the next phase. Further, PHMDC requires a daily new case count below 39 for four consecutive weeks to open schools for grades three through five, and below 19 for four consecutive weeks to open grades six through twelve, for in-person instruction. PHMDC has also said that if the daily case count exceeds 54, it may require all schools to close, even for kindergarten through second grade, which currently may remain open.
According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s data dashboard, as of 2 pm yesterday, Public Health of Madison and Dane County and UW testing had confirmed another 66 new positives cases among students – 25 living on campus and 41 living off campus. Since they were only able received a small number of tests returned from the Labor Day weekend, this put the positive test rate for yesterday at 20 percent while the 7 day average increased to 6.5 percent for students and remains at .4 percent for staff. The total number of positive cases for students and staff in on and off campus testing to 1070 cases. Students make up 1044 or 97.5 percent of all positive cases for both UW staff and students. The seven-day average of cases is now 106 cases per day as of September 8 for those both on and off campus.
As of this morning, UW has run 19,331 tests since on campus testing began on August 6 with 3.4 percent of those tests coming back positive – a total of 651 positive tests.
At the time of this update, the most updated data on positive test percentage for a single day is for September 9, which is at 8.2 percent while the positive test percentage for September 8 has increased to 7.8 percent. The positive percentage for September 7 has been updated to 4.8 percent and September 6 is at 8.2 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 Monday, Madison365 updated our interactive Dane County Coronavirus Map. The map will be updated weekly.
We will have an update of today’s statewide numbers later this afternoon.
