MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – Wisconsin reported a new single-day record of 64 COVID-19-related deaths on Tuesday. But one question persists for some people – are those numbers being inflated by the state?
The short, simple answer is no.
Reports of any communicable disease are relayed to state officials through an online surveillance system.
“The mechanism for reporting deaths is through the reportable disease surveillance system, which we use for all communicable diseases. All of the COVID-19 case data that we report every day also comes in through that system,” said Bureau of Infectious Disease Dr. Ryan Westergaard. “[There’s a] relatively long list of reportable conditions that if any health care provider makes a diagnosis or finds a case, they’re obligated to report them through this online system.”
Every death the state reports comes from a report of a clinician in a hospital or medical examiner who has made a determination based on the clinical evidence surrounding the case that an individual’s death was either in-part or mainly due to COVID-19.
“When that diagnosis gets made, it gets reported to the state and we report those,” Westergaard said. “So we rely on trained medical professionals and medical examiners to make that determination to get reported in a uniform fashion through our system, and we report that data.”
1,852 Wisconsinites have died either in-part or mainly due to the virus. DHS considers 161,260 people to have recovered.
In comparison, during the 2019-2020 flu season, there were 36,175 cases of the flu in Wisconsin with 4,425 flu-related hospitalizations and 183 deaths.
