26 Wisconsin counties now seeing high COVID-19 community levels

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - High COVID-19 community levels dominated southwestern Wisconsin in the latest weekly update to the Department of Health Services map. The large swath of orange, which indicates high activity, comes as levels worsen across the state.

More and more counties across Wisconsin registered high community levels in the report issued Friday morning. After ticking up to 16 counties last week, that number surged to 26 on the new map. Additionally, while the past two reports high activity was concentrated first in the northern reaches of the state before moving south last week, the orange counties are now more evenly distributed across the state.

Columbia, Dane, and Rock counties form the eastern edge of a block of high activity counties that stretch west to Grant and Crawford counties, along the Mississippi River. Milwaukee and Waukesha counties were orange as well; but COVID-19 relatively leapfrogged Dodge and Jefferson counties, each of which scored low activity.

Besides those two, only 14 other counties slotted in the low category, leaving 30 remaining in the medium column. DHS creates its map based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The categorizations are determined by weighing the number of new cases per capita against the hospitalization rate.

CDC COVID-19 Community Levels, on Friday, July 29, 2022.(Dept. of Health Services)

Earlier in the week, DHS reported growing hospitalization rates in three of Wisconsin’s seven regions: the western, north central, and southeastern parts of the state. In the northeast, hospitalizations are trending downward. The rest of Wisconsin, along with the state as a whole, showed no significant change.

The seven-day rolling-average for new, confirmed cases saw two days of slight declines, settling at 1,785 cases per day over the past week in this latest report.