Improves process, ensures most up-to-date data

FROM THE WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has updated the Wisconsin Electronic Disease Surveillance System (WEDSS) to allow positive COVID-19 test results to be automatically imported into the system. This change is intended to support the efforts of local and tribal health departments (LTHDs) to manage the large influx of positive tests resulting from the ongoing surge driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

As a result of this new auto-import process, DHS expects COVID-19 data to be temporarily elevated  over the next few days while this process occurs and back-logged cases are brought into the live system. This change will help DHS provide the most accurate and up to date data moving forward. In the meantime, we encourage you look at seven-day averages, which help to smooth out day-to-day fluctuations in data, as well as data by date of symptom onset or diagnosis to more accurately track disease activity in Wisconsin.