How COVID-19 Stands In Wisconsin: Global ‘End In Sight’ Predicted

WISCONSIN — While the World Health Organization this week said an "end is in sight" for the pandemic, health officials still recommend Wisconsin residents take precautions to live with COVID-19.

New U.S. cases and hospitalizations are trending downward to levels around when the pandemic began, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed. Still, nationwide, around 357 people are dying every day, according to the CDC's seven-day rolling average — far above the average of 168 deaths per day for the week ending July 6, 2022. Three months ago the nationwide average was 258 deaths daily.

In Wisconsin, about nine people died daily in the week leading up to Thursday, according to the CDC's 7-day-rolling average. Wisconsin's 7-day-average represents a small increase compared to recent weeks, but it does not go beyond levels that largely evened out in early April after a winter-time spike, online data showed.

“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing Wednesday after COVID-19 deaths reached their lowest level — 11,000 for the week of Sept. 5-11 — since the pandemic began.

“We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” he said, warning that “now is the worst time to stop running” in the race against the virus.

The United States is seeing “an important shift in our fight against the virus,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said at a briefing earlier this month.

That’s if the virus doesn’t mutate again, making a new omicron-specific booster shot less effective.

“In the absence of dramatically different variants, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy of Infectious Diseases, said at the briefing.

Health officials recommend the new booster shot for all Americans, but especially for people 50 and older and people with underlying health issues.

Just over 79 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but the number of people who are fully vaccinated with one booster shot drops off significantly, standing at 48 percent.

In Wisconsin, 58.6 percent of people are fully vaccinated and have a booster dose, online CDC data showed. State health officials recently encouraged all people to receive their booster shots ahead of the wintertime.

“As we head into the fall and winter respiratory virus season, we encourage all Wisconsinites to make a plan to boost their protection against COVID-19,” said DHS Secretary-designee Karen Timberlake in a news release. “Everyone 12 and older is eligible for the added protection of the updated boosters. This is especially important for people 50 and older and those who are immunocompromised.”

Hospitalizations are an important metric used by health officials to track the impact of COVID-19 in specific areas. The most current CDC hospitalization forecast says admissions will “remain stable or have an uncertain trend,” with between 1,300 to 7,700 new confirmed admissions likely by the first week in October.

In Wisconsin, the CDC predicts the number of hospital admissions to continue on a slight downward trend, though some models predict spikes in coming months to lesser extents.