COVID-19 case numbers continue to drop in the state, but COVID-19 is not gone. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services COVID-19 website reports there's still a seven-day average of 17 deaths per day.
Still, that's less than half the seven-day average of three weeks ago.
Medical College of Wisconsin President and CEO Dr. John Raymond says it's possible many Wisconsin counties may soon drop out of the "critically-high" category of new COVID-19 cases.
"So looking ahead, if the pandemic trajectory continues to rapidly decline, it is possible that the daily case counts in Wisconsin could be in the low to medium range two to four weeks from now," Raymond told the Greater Milwaukee Committee on Monday.
Raymond said that he's often asked if the end of the surge of the omicron variant will usher in a transition from COVID-19 being a pandemic to endemic.
He warned endemic means the virus won't disappear and we accept that it can't be eradicated.
"The best-case scenario is that the waning of omicron will, in fact, usher in a long-lasting endemic state with relatively stable, low levels of community transmission, and certainly, that is our hope. The worst-case scenario, which is also possible, would be the emergence of new variants of COVID-19 that have significantly altered biological properties that increase transmissibility even further. This could obviously disrupt the endemic equilibrium, like what happened with the rapid emergence of delta and omicron," Raymond warned.
Raymond said as long as there are vaccine inequities between parts of the world, new virus variants could emerge and be brought to the United States.
Health officials continue to recommend getting vaccinated for COVID-19. More than one-third of Milwaukee County residents have not completed the vaccine series. And 60 miles to the northwest, nearly half the people in Dodge County have not gotten all their COVID-19 shots.
