As we cautiously celebrate decreasing trends in COVID case counts statewide, the Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center’s (WHAIC’s)
COVID-19 dashboard shows just how far we’ve come in tamping down virus spread and achieving some relief for the state’s hospitals and health systems.
With statewide hospitalizations falling below 300 this week, we have returned to levels not seen since late August 2020, prior to a frightening surge in cases that pushed the state’s health system to the brink.
“We’re not out of the woods,” said WHA President and CEO Eric Borgerding, “but just as we sounded alarm bells during the precipitous rise in cases we saw in the fall, we should acknowledge this encouraging trend. The rapid increase and subsequent drop in hospitalizations as reflected in WHAIC’s data is an incredible record of what we’ve been through and how our members stepped up to fight an unprecedented health challenge.”
While the state’s vaccination program ramps up, it is important to remain vigilant with respect to the behaviors that have helped drive this downward case trend. The WHA-led
Stop the COVID Spread! coalition will soon be introducing new, sharable digital messages and images that encourage continued mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing.
WHAIC created the online COVID-19 dashboard to help policymakers and the public better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin. The dashboard features easy-to-understand visualizations of daily COVID-19 hospitalizations and equipment capacity, including bed count, available ventilators and the number of hospitals with seven or fewer days of supplies of PPE. The interactive dashboard allows views of both statewide and healthcare emergency readiness coalition (HERC) regional data and has become a go-to resource for media and state and national leaders seeking the best information to inform their decision making, logging nearly a million page views to date.