Fewer COVID-19 cases were reported in Wisconsin than any day since Christmas

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - The last two times new confirmed COVID-19 cases were lower than they were on Monday, friends and families were gathering around the dinner table to celebrate Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. In fact, you’d have to go back more than 150 days to find a non-holiday that saw fewer cases than were found in the Dept. of Health Services latest report.

For the first time all year, state health officials did not need to use a comma when they counted the number of cases recorded in the past day. The agency’s tally of 739 cases on Monday dropped the seven-day rolling-average below the 2,000 case per day mark for the first time in while as well.

New confirmed COVID-19 cases by date confirmed, and 7-day average.(Dept. of Health Services)

State data show the rolling-average crossed that threshold in the first days of November and had not fallen below it since then. At this time last month, that figure was six times higher than it is now; although that was also the first day that DHS began clearing its backlog of cases that had not been previously counted. Monday’s relatively low case count (at least compared to this past fall and winter) brought the total number of cases to 1,369,062 since the pandemic began.

Eight new COVID-19-related deaths were reported by DHS on Monday, allowing the seven-day rolling-average to tick up slightly over the weekend. Its figures show the rolling average rose to 17 per day, lower than the past two months, but in-line with the numbers seen over the fall.