The Wisconsin Department of Health Services today reported there are 187 facility-wide public health investigations underway related to COVID-19 statewide.
DHS is providing this data to be transparent about open investigations. When a facility-wide investigation is triggered, DHS assists local health officials in "wrapping around the facility," which includes ramping up testing of anyone that could have come in contact with infected individuals.
Local health officials investigate every single confirmed case and conduct contact tracing regardless of the setting. When there are cases in a particular location, they can broaden their focus to the entire facility to mitigate further infections.
The data is broken down by:
- Long-term care facilities: nursing homes, assisted living, residential care apartment complexes, etc.
- Group housing: correctional facilities, homeless shelters, dorms and group homes
- Health care facilities: hospitals, clinics, dialysis centers, hospice and in-home care
- Workplaces (non-health care): manufacturing, production facilities, distribution facilities, offices and other indoor workplaces
- Other settings: adult or child day care centers, restaurants, event spaces and religious settings
A facility-wide public health investigation is triggered at a long-term care facility when just a single case is confirmed because of the vulnerability of the population. An investigation is triggered in the other types of facilities when there are at least two or more cases.
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The state reports that among the 93 investigations into long-term care facilities, 20 facilities have a single confirmed case, 25 facilities have less than 5 confirmed cases. The average number of confirmed cases is 6 and the range is from 1-54 confirmed cases.
Milwaukee-Area Investigations
There are a total of 113 facility-wide investigations taking place in the Southeastern region (60.4 percent of all investigations).
The southeastern region includes these counties:
- Kenosha
- Milwaukee
- Ozaukee
- Racine
- Walworth
- Washington
- Waukesha
