America's Wisconsin COVID-19 Problem Looks Worse: The New CDC Map

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Doctors’ offices, urgent care centers and emergency rooms seem to be seeing few new COVID-19-like illnesses in most states — but Wisconsin looks worse, and what’s happening in Idaho is a mystery.

That’s the picture public health specialists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are giving in their new “influenza-like illness” activity map for the week ending May 23, based on reports received up through today.

The CDC’s latest influenza-like illness activity map shows that most states are at the healthiest, darkest green level of activity.

But Wisconsin has moved one rung up the CDC’s color scale, to a high level of activity, from a moderately high level of activity for the week ending May 16.

The CDC showed Idaho moving up to a yellow, moderate level of activity for the week ending May 16. For the week ending May 23, the CDC colored Idaho white on the activity map. That means the CDC has no new activity data for Idaho.

The CDC uses reports on influenza-like illness activity to track the intensity of outbreaks of COVID-19, and other, similar illnesses, because it knows that doctors treat many patients with influenza-like illnesses without bothering to test them, and because doctors may have little or no access to reliable tests for unusual diseases, or for new diseases, like COVID-19.

Resources

• The CDC’s weekly COVID-19 report is available here.
• The CDC’s provisional COVID-19 mortality data table is available here.
• An article about the previous weekly COVID-19 report is available here.

The statistics on cases of influenza-like illness activity “out in the community” come from primary care providers and other providers out in the community.

Some activists have suggested that state public health agencies or other agencies could be manipulating data to ease reopening efforts.

Another factor affecting completeness and accuracy of data reporting could be people going on vacation for Memorial Day.

CDC officials themselves say, in introductory notes, that still another factor affecting the data is changes in the way people are getting care during the COVID-19 crisis. Some people may be using telemedicine providers, and they may be less likely to go to doctors’ offices and other community-based providers for what appear to be relatively minor illnesses.

The CDC is also providing on deaths attributed to COVID-19, and on deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza-like illnesses, and all causes, for comparison purposes.

Because may people with COVID-19 spend weeks in the hospital before dying, many of the deaths reported now may represent infections contracted in April, or earlier, rather than the current spread of severe acquired respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19.

The CDC preliminary death statistics for the weeks ending May 16 and May 23 show that COVID-19, and similar illnesses, appear to be causing a lower percentage of all deaths in the United States than in earlier weeks.

The death statistics for a given week take at least a month to firm up. But early indicators are that the percentage of all deaths caused by COVID-19 and similar-looking illnesses may still be a lot lower in Idaho and Wisconsin than in the country as a whole, in spite of the high level of community-level illness activity in Idaho and Wisconsin. That could be a sign that people in Idaho and Wisconsin are more likely to seek care for mild cases of COVID-19, or that some other factor is throwing off comparisons. Or, it could be a sign that the outbreak is heating up in Idaho and Wisconsin, and that the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths in those states is on track to increase in coming weeks.

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— Read The New COVID-19 Death Snapshot, on ThinkAdvisor.

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