MADISON (WKOW) -- Dane County's level of COVID activity has decreased by more than 50% since mid-November, but experts say the good news should be viewed with a grain of salt.
"I like the decline that I'm seeing in the number of new cases," infectious diseases expert Dr. Ajay Sethi said. "But we're not testing as much right now. If we saw a decline in new cases despite an increase in testing, that would be the right combination."
In mid-November, every county in Wisconsin had a "critically high" level of COVID activity, and the state was frequently in the top three states for per capita cases. Now, Wisconsin sits at 37th in the ranking.
Even as conditions in South Central Wisconsin are improving, Sethi says things still aren't great.
"We went from being off the charts to being very high," he said. "We are in a better place than we were in the fall, but I don't want to ignore the fact that most people in Dane County [and] in Wisconsin still have not had COVID and don't have immunity to this disease."
He said any progress made over the past seven weeks could reverse quickly if there's another surge in cases.
"Within two weeks, you can get a peak that feels really unmanageable," Sethi said. "Then hospitalizations follow a couple of weeks after that."
According to the Wisconsin Hospital Association, 1,010 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on January 1. That's the lowest number since 959 were hospitalized on October 13.
But Sethi says getting back to our early fall state shouldn't be the goal.
"June or July is really where we want to be with the transmission of COVID," he said.
The average number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in June was 287.
While the COVID vaccine provides some hope of a return to decreased transmission and infection, Sethi said it's possible to continue the declining trend of new cases even before there's widespread immunization.
"There's a real rapid response to mitigation," he said. "If everybody does it, we could technically beat the virus without the vaccine. This decline occurred without the vaccine, so we could continue that."
He said simple measures like masks, physical distancing and good hand hygiene are key to preventing another spike in cases.
As with Thanksgiving, Sethi said it will be important to wait a few weeks to see if there's a post-holiday case increase, which could portend a future rise in hospitalizations.
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