This morning Public Health of Madison and Dane County reported a net increase of 25 COVID cases, with seven cases removed from the data. This brings the county’s cumulative total to 40,322. Twelve of today’s new cases — 48 percent — are aged 18-22. Overall new cases in the county have dropped this morning by 10.6 percent over the past two weeks, according to today’s dashboard update. For the past 7 days, the county has averaged 14.0 cases per 100,000 residents per day.
The total number of deaths from COVID-19 for Dane County remains 273. About 65 percent of deaths in Dane County from COVID-19 have been adults older than 80. In total, there have been 11 deaths in the month of February.
According to their update yesterday afternoon, UW is averaging 7,103.6 tests a day for the past seven days as of February 26 for on-campus testing while cases are now averaging 35.7 cases per day for the same time – decreasing from yesterday’s reported 38.7 cases per day. For the past seven days, cases have decreased for UW students and staff about 30 percent while testing on campus has increased by 16.7 percent. For February 26, the positivity rate for on campus testing for staff and students has remained at 0.5 percent for the past seven days. Seven days ago, the positivity rate for campus was at 1.0 percent.
According to this week’s new Data Snapshot for February 8 through February 21, 50 percent of cases were UW Madison students or staff while 70 percent of tests for the county were run by UW’s University Health Services. When excluding UW cases and testing from the county’s total, the percent of positivity for the past two weeks was at 2.0, a drop from last week’s snap shot update of 2.6. With UW, the percent of positivity was at 1.2 percent from February 8 through February 21.
In total, for those two weeks, UW students accounted for 578 total positive cases or 47 percent, while UW staff account for 42 cases, or three percent. About 30 percent of all cases were associated with a dorm, fraternity/sorority or apartment building with 10 or more cases, and 34 percent of positive cases had attended a gathering or party within the past two weeks.
Dane County’s 14-day positive test rate as of February 24 has remained at 1.1 while the seven-day rate has dropped to 0.9. These rates do not include preliminary data from the past four days as that data continues to adjust as more tests are attributed.
For Dane County residents, the number of people ever hospitalized for COVID-19 has grown to 1,231. Currently, there are eight more people than yesterday currently hospitalized with COVID-19 with a total of 37 – including those who live in and outside of Dane County – with 10 of those in the ICU.
More comprehensive data for vaccinations is updated every Wednesday and Friday per week, for Dane County by age, race and ethnicity. The data is retrieved from the Wisconsin Immunization Registry for all adults and children within the state. The release and the information on the dashboard does warn that some of this information may be incorrect or incomplete as the data is not updated as soon as someone is vaccinated or double checked as consistently as other data gathered.
As of this morning, about 93,843 of people have received at least one dose of vaccine — 17.2 percent of all Dane County residents — while 55,915, or 10.2 percent of all residents, have completed both doses. Of those 93,843 residents, 61.5 percent are 65 and older while those aged 35-44 were 15.2 percent of those who received at least one vaccination. Of those who completed the vaccinations, 61.5 percent were also 65 and older. Vaccination data is broken down between those who are 16 – 65+. No data for children is available as the vaccinations have not yet been approved for those under 15.
From all those who have been vaccinated, 2.3 percent are Hispanic or Latinx. Hispanic/Latinx people make up seven percent of the county and are underrepresented in those being vaccinated. Black people, who make up about six percent of the population, only make up 2.5 percent of those who’ve received at least one dose of vaccine. Asian people, who make up 6 percent of the county population, only make up 2.7 percent of those who have received at least one vaccination. Those who are American Indian/Alaskan Native and are .5 percent of the population are .5 percent of those who have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Madison365 has updated our weekly map of COVID-19 cases in the county by census tract.
We will have an update later this afternoon for statewide numbers after 3 pm.
