Wisconsin sees only 55 new COVID-19 cases Monday; fewest since July 17

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - Only 55 new, confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported Monday across all of Wisconsin. While Mondays typically see the fewest number of cases in any given week, the Dept. of Health Services has not reported a lower case count on any single day since July 17 of last year - a stretch of 240 days.

Monday’s sub-100 case total is just the latest benchmark crossed as case numbers continue to collapse across the state. Two months ago, DHS officials were regularly reporting more than 10,000 cases per day. A month ago, on Valentine’s Day, the agency tallied 1,242 new cases on that day, which left the seven-day rolling-average for that week at 1,831 cases per day.

Now, it’s a fifth that - 341 cases per day.

With two weeks of March in the books, DHS has reported a total of 5,069 cases for the month. At the beginning of February, the state was averaging more than that (5,173) every day.

Delta’s Done

Monday saw one more promising sign: the possible end of the Delta variant.

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene reported Monday that no versions of the variant have been found in Wisconsin in the past thirty days. The laboratory does not sequence all positive cases, so it’s tough to say that the variant is completely gone.

The variant first made inroads into the state in April 2021. By July, about the same time cases were as low as they are now, Delta cases made up virtually all tested cases. It remained the dominant strand in Wisconsin until the final weeks of the year, when Omicron took over.

And, despite Omicron powering the record breaking surge of cases in late December and January, the state laboratory still has not sequenced nearly as many cases of the new variant compared to Delta. It’s numbers show - of the samples it has collected - the lab as found over 27,000 Delta cases versus just over 10,000 instances of Omicron.

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