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In 2022, COVID-19 will be the leading cause of death in the United States. Today, COVID-19 still kills more than 1,000 people each week across the country, but the magnitude of its toll has decreased.
With treatments for COVID-19 now readily available and people’s immunity boosted by prior infection and vaccination, fewer people died from COVID-19 in 2023 compared to the year before. Deaths have remained at low levels compared with earlier in the pandemic.
But in Wisconsin, as in other states, the virus continues to send many people to the hospital during the week and killing other people — up to 1,000 Wisconsin citizens in 2023.
Here’s a look at how COVID-19 has affected the state in 2023.
In 2023, at least 1,124 people in Wisconsin died with COVID-19, bringing the total number of COVID-19 deaths in Wisconsin to at least 17,517, according to the latest figures reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That is far fewer COVID-19 deaths than occurred in 2020 when well over 6,000 people in Wisconsin died from COVID-19, but still represents about 2% of deaths from any cause in 2023, according to data from the CDC.
The total for 2023 will most likely rise as deaths from the past few weeks are reported to the government and deaths in the final days of the year are counted.
In the U. S. , COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death in 2022 but is more likely to fall in 2023 ratings, thanks to better treatments and increased immunity that led to a reduction in COVID-19 deaths in 2023. . , based on initial data from the CDC.
At least two hundred Wisconsin nursing home citizens died from COVID-19 in 2023, according to the latest Centers for Medicare data on Dec. 10.
This brings the total number of nursing home citizens in the state who have died from COVID-19 to 2485; This figure is probably an underestimate. Nursing homes were not required to report COVID-19 cases and deaths until May 2020, after 19 had already begun arriving at nursing homes. Of that total of 2,485, more than 1,500 died in 2020, before vaccines were widely available.
About 459 patients in Wisconsin were hospitalized with COVID-19 on an average weekday ending Dec. 23, an increase from 422 patients compared to the day last week, according to the most recent data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has increased since July.
Public health officials are now tracking hospital admissions and emergency room visits for COVID-19, rather than the number of cases, to get a sense of the point of COVID-19 transmission in the community.
States like Wisconsin are no longer reporting the daily number of COVID-19 cases. The number of cases is no longer a reliable indicator of the spread of COVID-19, in part because most people with COVID-19 no longer get tested. or if they do, they take the test at home, not at a public fitness testing site. The effects of those at-home tests are not shared with public fitness officials.
There are still far fewer people hospitalized with COVID-19 now than at the height of the pandemic, when Wisconsin hospitals reported having more than 2,000 COVID-19 patients a day, according to data reported by the CDC.
Wisconsin reported its highest levels of COVID-19 hospitalizations in November 2020, before a vaccine was available, and in January 2022, the omicron surge and before oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19 were widely available.
A year ago, about 600 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 that day, a higher number than today, according to the CDC. However, Wisconsin is experiencing a number of hospital admissions like a year ago. About 643 more people were recently admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 in the week ending Dec. 23, about the same number as last year, according to CDC data.
It’s hard to know precisely where COVID-19 is peaking now that case numbers are no longer a reliable indicator of COVID-19 spread. Public health officials now rely on hospital and wastewater knowledge to get a sense of the presence of COVID-19. 19 trends.
More than two dozen Wisconsin counties, adding those surrounding La Crosse, Milwaukee, Racine and Superior, have an average point of new COVID-19 hospital admissions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC considers any county or domain comprising counties with between 10 and 19. 9 new hospital admissions consistent with 100,000 citizens to have an average point of new COVID-19 admissions. CDC designations range from low to medium to high.
The CDC considers Wisconsin counties to have a low point of new COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Regionally, state knowledge shows that COVID-19 hospitalizations increased in all regions of the state — the northeast and southeast regions, where hospitalizations were robust — in the two weeks leading up to Dec. 23, according to the state Department of Health Services.
Very high levels of COVID-19 have been detected in most wastewater treatment sites across the state, including significant increases at the Appleton, Black River Falls and Milwaukee’s South Shore wastewater treatment plants, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says JN.1 is now the most widely circulating variant in the United States and estimates that it makes up between 39% and 50% of COVID-19 infections.
The variant is very similar to the highly mutated BA. 2. 86 variant that the CDC warned it was against in 2023. In the past, the JN. 1 variant has been grouped with BA. 2. 86 in the CDC’s variant share estimates .
The immediate spread of JN. 1 suggests that the variant could be more transmissible or evade people’s immune systems more than other variants, according to the CDC. There is no evidence that JN. 1 causes more severe disease than other circulating variants. COVID-19 vaccines and treatments are expected to work well against JN. 1, CDC officials said.
Contact Sarah Volpenhein at svolpenhei@gannett. com or 414-607-2159. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahVolp.
This article originally published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The speed of COVID deaths slowed in 2023 thanks to a 1100 increase in Wisconsin.
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