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Something peculiar happened on June 8: The Wisconsin Department of Health Services lowered the state’s official death toll by one.
A routine error caused an initial error, but the correction “illustrates one of the many difficulties health officials in Wisconsin and elsewhere face as they track and report information about the lethal impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” Will Cushman reports for WisContext.
Top Stories
Detecting COVID-19 deaths in Wisconsin — WisContext
American Indian tribes thwarted in efforts to get coronavirus data — Politico
Emails reveal chaos as meatpacking companies fought health agencies over COVID-19 outbreaks in their plants — ProPublica
Milwaukee County implements ‘universal face mask policy’ as COVID-19 cases rise — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
What you can do to be safer when you go out to Wisconsin restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee gets $5.7 million to fight eviction amid coronavirus pandemic — WTMJ-TV
Beloit demographics, outbreaks contribute to city’s high COVID-19 case count — Beloit Daily News
Dane County moves to Phase 2 of COVID-19 order Monday, further expanding businesses — Wisconsin State Journal
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Government updates
Wisconsin Department of Health Services
U.S. Centers and Disease Control and Prevention
Quotable
“We don’t vaccinate to protect ourselves, we vaccinate to protect others and those who can’t.. .It’s a lot of the parallels that we’re seeing in the COVID fight — you know, we don’t wear masks necessarily to protect ourselves, but it’s to protect from the transmission of the virus to others.”
Assembly Democratic Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, as quoted by WPR.
Data to note
The Oshkosh-Neenah metro area is now on The New York Times’ list of fastest-growing COVID-19 hotspots. With 258 recent cases and totals doubling every 10.8 days, Oshkosh-Neenah was behind just five other United States metro areas in the category of “highest average daily growth rate.”
“Growth rates are useful measures in epidemics because they tell us whether things are getting better or worse,” the Times reports. “In places where the growth rate is high but the number of cases is relatively low, a community may still have time to flatten its curve before an outbreak becomes widespread.”
A City of Oshkosh press release Thursday said the Winnebago County Health Department partially attributed the virus spike to a “lack of physical distancing at large gatherings and bars and restaurants that have opened since the end of ‘Safer at Home.’”
Resilient Wisconsin
People helping others and showing resilience during this time of anxiety. Send suggestions by tagging us on social media — @wisconsinwatch — or emailing us: tips@wisconsinwatch.org.
Spread love, not viruses: Beloiter makes masks for hundreds — Beloit Daily News
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The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
