COVID Data Notes for the Week of February 16, 2023

The data snapshot is released once per month. You can find past issues on our data and dashboard page. The data below are from January 16 to February 12. To learn more about CDC recommendations based on our data, visit the CDC Community Levels page.

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Key messages from today’s Data Snapshot

• Cases were stable from 1/16-1/29 and also stable over the past two weeks. We currently have a 14-day average of 56 confirmed cases per day. Inpatient hospitalizations have been stable over the past month, and we currently have a 14-day average of 53 people hospitalized with COVID in Dane County hospitals each day. Percent positivity increased slightly from 5.8% two weeks ago to 6.0% for the past two weeks. We’re currently averaging 808 PCR tests per day over the past two weeks.
• For the most recent sampling period (2/5-2/9), Madison has a very low COVID wastewater concentration with no significant increase. For the most recent sampling period (1/17-1/31), Sun Prairie is at a very low COVID concentration with no significant increase. Note that the Madison sewershed is sampled at a higher frequency than the Sun Prairie sewershed; because of this, it is likely that the Madison wastewater data is more precise in comparison to Sun Prairie.
• Dane County had higher deaths from all causes during the three years of the pandemic compared to the three years before the pandemic, especially in the late fall/winter of 2020 and 2021, which align with when we also saw spikes in COVID deaths. This indicates that COVID was likely the main cause of excess deaths we experienced in 2020, 2021, and early 2022.
• The most vaccinated counties in Wisconsin had a 37% lower COVID death rate in 2021 compared to 2020, while the least vaccinated counties had no difference in death rates. The COVID death rate in 2022 was significantly lower than both 2020 and 2021 in both the most and least vaccinated counties.