Three Wisconsin counties fall to Medium levels of COVID-19 case activity

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - As COVID-19 numbers continue falling in Wisconsin, the Department of Health Services added a less severe category back to its case activity data illustration Wednesday that hasn’t been used since last summer.

Three counties report Medium levels of COVID-19 case activity, which indicates a case rate lower than 100 per 100,000 people. Walworth County, Washington County and Rusk County all shine a bright blue color, indicating medium levels. Rusk County currently bares the lowest case burden at 28.5 per 100,000 and DHS noted it currently has five or fewer cases.

Buffalo County, located on the west central side of the state, is the lone county with very high levels of disease activity. The remaining 68 counties all show high levels of COVID-19, which is a case rate greater than 100 but fewer or equal to 350.

The state now is a totally different picture than it was during the two-week range from Jan. 19 to Feb. 1, which is the last time every county in the state lit up Red with critically high levels of disease activity. At that time, the case burden was at more than 1,900 per 100,000.

Now, the state is sitting at high levels of disease activity and is more than 13 times fewer than what it was during the critically high period over a month ago.

Department of Health Services COVID-19 disease activity page, March 9, 2022(Wisconsin Department of Health Services)

Wisconsin’s seven-day rolling average for new COVID-19 cases is at nearly 400 Wednesday, as 475 new cases of the virus were confirmed by state health officials. This brings the total number of cases ever reported in Wisconsin up to 1,385,624.

Fifty-three new COVID-19 deaths were added to the dashboard Wednesday by DHS, who noted 13 of them occurred in the past 30 days. The seven-day rolling average for COVID-19 deaths remains at eight, which it has been at for the past several days. DHS notes 12,210 Wisconsinites have died of COVID-19 or its complications, in all.

So far this week, 6,312 COVID-19 vaccines have been administered to Wisconsinites.