COVID-19 Status 12/27/2020

As you may have noted there have not been any wrap-ups about the COVID-19 numbers recently here. Holidays make the numbers difficult to read, and between the recent Thanksgiving holiday and even more-recent Christmas, the reported numbers are confusing. There have been big dips and spikes recently and much of this simply has to do with the fact that reporting has been a little erratic. The death numbers are particularly erratic since they depend on death certificates being issued and a precise determination of the cause of death, which means that even in the most normal times they lag all of the other numbers by at least several days.

The good news really is in the general trends, which have been favorable for the past few weeks. The number of cases reported per day were on a very strong upward trend, hitting a peak for the state on November 18. Since then the trend has been for the new cases to decline, as you can see by the 7-day average trend in this graph. There was a very small peak for a few days after the Thanksgiving holiday, but since then the numbers have been in a distinct decline, 

The number of deaths, on the other hand, has been very disconcerting, reaching a peak on Dec. 22, and declining slowly since. It's really too early to know if this is a real trend or a short-term phenomenon. 

It is clear that many people traveled fo the Christmas holiday, and that it is likely that the case numbers will increase again over the next week, both due to the holiday and because it is likely testing rates will increase because of the holiday and because home testing kits are now available in the state. 

We would like to encourage people to continue to follow safe practices by staying home as much as possible, wearing masks in public, washing your hands frequently, and being tested if you have any reason to believe you are showing any COVID-19 symptoms. The contact tracing app is also now available, and we'd encourage you to enable it on your iPhone, or to download the app for Android phones.  We have heard some people saying that they have found the Android app difficult to find in the Google Play store - the direct link is https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=State+of+Wisconsin+-+De… - you can go there and ask to download it to your Android phone.