Eau Claire County up to 43 confirmed COVID-19 cases

Eau Claire County now has 43 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a jump of 9 since Friday but health officials say the rise of the numbers should not be a surprise.

The reason, an increase in testing.

Right now, Wisconsin has the capacity to conduct more than 11,000 COVID-19 tests each day.

Around 3,000 tests are done each day currently.

A number Governor Tony Evers wants to continue to see rise in the coming weeks.

"Wisconsin is geared up to provide 85,000 COVID-19 tests per week. This will ensure that everybody in Wisconsin who needs a test receives a test. We are one of the top states in COVID-19 testing capacity and our goal is to ensure that we are one of the top states in actual testing per capita," said Evers.

Health officials say it's not necessarily the raw number of people who test positive that tells the story, but rather the percentage of people who are testing positive.

"Our 7 day average is at 3.6 percent now, so it is higher than the just below 2 percent that it was previously. We know that as we test more we will find more, but on average our hope is that the positivity rate stays fairly low. So we will be watching that," said Eau Claire City-County Health Department Director Lieske Giese.

Across the state, including the Chippewa Valley, there are community testing sites popping up where people with symptoms can get tested for free.

"It's really for us to understand folks that are symptomatic with the symptoms that we've all talked about. Shortness of breath, a fever of 100.4 or higher, a dry cough. But also some of those milder symptoms like chills or a little bit of nausea or diarrhea," said Dunn County Health Department Director KT Gallagher.

Health officials say the ability to perform more tests is a critical part in being able to open Wisconsin back up.

"We want testing numbers to go up, not stay flat. If we're really going to get to the place that we need to be in order to continue to open our economy we need the number of people tested be all those that have symptoms," said Giese.

Dunn and Chippewa counties also released updated COVID-19 numbers Monday.

Chippewa County has 25 confirmed cases, 19 of those people are considered recovered.

Dunn County has 12 confirmed cases with 9 of the 12 cases considered recovered.