Falling COVID-19 Numbers? It’s Too Soon To Celebrate

From the Wisconsin Examiner:

By Erik Gunn
December 2, 2020

COVID-19 cases have been declining recently, but they’re still “way too high” — and it’s not at all certain that there’s a genuine downward trend in coronavirus infections, according to state health officials.

In the same spirit, Gov. Tony Evers says he isn’t counting on reports of a state budget surplus of nearly $1.2 billion to be able to fund any new state COVID-19 relief in place of more federal aid.

Evers and Andrea Palm, secretary-designee for the state Department of Health Services (DHS), gave the back-to-back cautionary messages in an online news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Wisconsin remains “in crisis right now,” Palm said, reporting that the state has now recorded 392,313 people who have tested positive for the coronavirus as of Tuesday, with 3,420 deaths.

Since Nov. 18, when the seven-day average for positive tests peaked at 6,563, that measure has been declining, according to data reported by DHS. As of Tuesday, the positive-test seven-day average was 3,905.

Other factors may have contributed to those reductions, however.

“I think we need to take a wait and see,” Palm said. Demand for testing fell over the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and there were fewer community testing sites open as well. “We need to hold a little bit and see how the numbers reveal themselves to us over the coming couple of weeks.”

The numbers have dropped in recent days, with seven-day averages between 4,200 and 4,300 positive tests Sunday through Tuesday. “That is still way, way, way too high,” said Palm. “I remember the days when we started breaching 1,000 [positive tests] and we were alarmed by that.”

The state’s continued high positive-test rate — with a seven-day average of 30.1% on Monday — “still is a sign that it’s a really dangerous situation,” added Dr. Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer for the DHS communicable diseases bureau.

Only positive-test rates of 5% “or ideally less than 1%” would offer the assurance that “we’re testing enough people and we have a good handle on transmission,” he continued “We’re still far, far above that.”

Both DHS officials warned against complacency.

“We still need to work harder,” Westergaard said, “because there’s still a lot of undiagnosed infection out there. Transmission is still occurring at a high level and we really need to do more, not less to try to prevent the spread further.”

“While I hope we are going in the right direction,” Palm said, “it is in no way a sign that we need to take our foot off the gas, because we have a long way to go to get back to a place where our daily cases are manageable from a testing perspective, from a contact tracing perspective, from a hospitalization perspective. There are so many deaths that we can and should prevent, by doing everything that we can to stop the spread.”

On the contact tracing front, Palm said DHS has begun talks with the Google-Apple joint venture that developed a smartphone app to inform users if they have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus. The department expects to deploy the app, which is already in use in a number of other states, later in December, she said.

Palm repeated the public health mantras that remain the only available prevention in the pandemic before a vaccine becomes widely available, probably not until months into 2021. People should stay home as much as possible, venturing out only when necessary; wear a face mask when outside the home, mostly to protect others because the wearer might have the virus and have no symptoms; wash hands frequently and gather only with members of their own immediate household.

“If you hosted or attended a gathering over the long holiday weekend, please take steps to stop the spread this week by quarantining,” Palm said. People who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 should remain in isolation.

People who have been exposed also should get a test from their healthcare providers or from a community testing site — but they are better off waiting for a test after at least three to five days because the virus might not be detectable earlier. And even a person who has been exposed but whose test is negative should remain apart from others — even in the immediate household — and watch for symptoms “to ensure you do not develop an infection or transmit the virus to anyone else,” she added.

While DHS officials cautioned against prematurely assuming that the COVID-19 pandemic was easing in Wisconsin, Evers expressed even greater skepticism at the promise of a larger-than-expected state budget surplus.

A recent report from the state Department of Administration projects a general fund balance of $1.172 billion at the end of the state’s 2019-2020 fiscal year, prompting a reporter to ask the governor whether he would seek a state-funded stimulus package in response to the recession that the pandemic has produced.

Evers called any such proposals premature, particularly in light of $300 million in budget cuts that the administration has already made in response to the pandemic.

“We have to make sure that we know exactly where we are at the end of the day,” Evers said.

Beyond that the need for economic support and for resources to combat the pandemic “is a federal issue, it’s not a state issue,” he added, calling for new federal aid to states, including Wisconsin, to support testing and contact tracing.

“It is a national pandemic,” Evers said, “and we need a national response.”

This story was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner. For more stories from the Wisconsin Examiner, visit WisconsinExaminer.com.