Public Health Madison & Dane County

Large Number of Cases from This Weekend

This weekend (June 20 and 21), 70 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Dane County. Of those, about 60% were younger people ages 10-39. It’s summer, and we know folks want to enjoy barbecues, sports, and get-togethers, but we are still in a pandemic. Our website has a number of ways you can reduce risk while still enjoying the activities you love.

Percent Positivity Now Included on Dashboard

As of last Friday, our dashboard now includes percent positivity. This measure will be about three days behind the current date to accommodate delayed test results.

The numbers of tests per day and the number of positive tests per day fluctuate greatly, so while this isn’t a measure we find particularly useful to look at on a daily basis, this is one of our most common requests. See the dashboard notes in the bottom left corner to understand how this (and all the dashboard data) are calculated. As a reminder, we also include percent positivity in our weekly data snapshots.

Data Snapshot

Today we released this week’s data snapshot. If you’re new to the data snapshot, we publish a weekly summary of the status for each of our metrics (you can find past issues on our data and metrics page). We have a few notes for this week’s issue:

We’re seeing a trend of increasing number of cases.

We are not yet in the red for this 14 day period, but with several recent days with case counts of 20+, this may change soon if we continue to see high case counts. This is not what we want to see in this important metric. We are closely monitoring all of our metrics and process measures to see what is driving this increase in cases. In this 14 day period:

• 66% of cases were younger, between the ages of 10-39
• 43% of cases were tested at the community test site at Alliant Energy Center
• 21% of cases were associated with a cluster: 22 from congregate facilities, 18 from businesses, 6 from daycares, and 5 from other clusters (such as a gathering outside of Dane County)
• 17% of cases were asymptomatic at the time of interview

The measure for community spread turned red.

33% of cases who tested positive didn’t know where they could’ve gotten COVID-19, up from 24% in the last data snapshot. This number needs to be under 20% to be green and between 20 and 30% to be yellow. Younger people tend to have less severe cases of COVID, but people with mild or no symptoms can still spread the virus to others, especially if they are out and about because they don’t feel sick. 66% of our asymptomatic cases from this time period are under the age of 40. We encourage people to keep small social circles so that if someone does test positive, it’s easier for them to identify where they could have gotten COVID, and who they potentially could have also passed it on to.

While data show Dane County is overall doing a steady job of limiting mobility, much of our state is on the move, according to UW-Madison data. Many of our cases have reported travel both to nearby counties and out of state. This is one of the reasons why we look at regional data to inform our metrics.

The measure for COVID-like illness turned red.

There was a statistically significant increase in the number of COVID-like syndromic cases within the most recent 14 day period. However, this is a measure most useful when testing isn’t widely available. At this point, the numbers are still very small, so an increase of this magnitude isn’t too concerning. We will continue to monitor this data trend, along with the trend in hospitalizations, as this metric can be a potential early warning indicator for future hospitalizations.

As always, you can stay up-to-date on the latest data by checking our dashboard daily or reviewing the weekly snapshot.