Another DHS backlog inflates COVID-19 case average into this week

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - The seven-day rolling average for new COVID-19 cases remains elevated as a result of the Dept. of Health Services clearing what is at least its second backlog of the year. The agency indicated Monday’s daily figure for new confirmed cases (314) was correct and this latest backlog had been resolved.

On Friday, DHS recorded over 1,500 new cases, a number that state health officials explained was inflated because external reporting sites dumped their backlog of cases from early 2022 into the Wisconsin Electronic Disease Surveillance System. In mid-January, the agency cleared a much more extreme backlog caused by the Omicron surge. At its peak, that backlog led to DHS reporting over 38,000 cases in a single day, at a time when the seven-day rolling average was about a third of that.

With the influx of old cases, the current seven-day rolling average now sits at 621 cases per day over the preceding week. That’s over two hundred cases more than where the average, which had been slowly rising, sat on Wednesday, prior to the backlog being cleared. With the latest cases added, state health officials have now tallied 1,398,629 cases since the pandemic began and the state is on pace to record its 1.4 millionth case later this week.

DHS gave no indication that the recent backlog affected the reporting of COVID-19 deaths in the state and recent figures do not reflect any spike. In fact, the seven-day rolling average for deaths returned to its lowest point – 3 per day- in approximately six months.

State health officials recorded no new deaths over the weekend and into Monday, leaving the number of people who have died from COVIND-19 or complications related to the coronavirus at 12.828 since the pandemic began.