Wisconsin reports 3 new confirmed cases of coronavirus The Department of Health Services reports three new patients have tested positive for the coronavirus in Wisconsin. Share Shares Copy Link Copy

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by Health Commissioner Jeanette Colic, chief Mark Rolfing in his command staff. Kyle, their house, who's our director of emergency management. And Nick Tomorrow, who is the emergency C preparedness coordinator for the Lucky Health Department, is, well, the Marquis Health Department. A swell a. Samaki Fire Department Continue to work diligently with our local, state and federal partners to prepare for and respond to the cove. It 19. Also notice a Corona virus. Cases continue to be confirmed throughout the United States. I want our residents to know that ensuring the health and safety of our residents is our top priority. For everyone behind me, this is our top priority, and we're committed to providing accurate information as this very fluid situation continues to unfold. Um, as of today, I think you're all aware that there still have been no cases here in Milwaukee. There have been three confirmed cases reported in the state of Wisconsin, two of those a believer in Dade County, and one isn't Pierce County, but we are, of course, monitoring this situation as closely as we can. We're monitoring it extremely closely. Um, and as we said earlier that while the public risk remains relatively low. This is a rapidly evolving situation. And should that change, of course, we would inform the public. I want to begin with the very basic stuff. And then, as we continue to advise people toe exercise, good hygiene in cleaning practices. For that reason, we should do all to all do our part. To keep the spread of the virus to a minimum, we ask our residents to take these simple steps. Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If not available, use hand sanitizer with at least 60% of alcohol cough into your elbow. Avoid touching your face with your hands. Stay home when you are sick. It's not just about you. It's about co workers and others that you come into contact with and clean, frequently touched surfaces, please. Also particularly for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Follow travel advisories that have been issued by the Centers for Disease Control in Prevention. We know that the World Health Organization has now declared this as a pandemic, and we have to be mindful of that, and we have heard the CDC officials talk about the inevitably inevitable nous of coming here. We are preparing for that and the key words for today. Our preparation and proactive measures. That's where we are right now. That's where we continue to be in a very, very much A prepared in this mode in a proactive mode. Earlier this afternoon, we contacted the governor's staff to inform them that the city Milwaukee, will be making the request for Governor Evers to declare a public emergency. And let me explain to you what that is and what is not. This is a preparedness measures and our reasons for doing so, and the firefighters have been very involved in this, as had spent our health commissioner and other health commissioners from southeastern Wisconsin. So please listen carefully to this. It's the open the door for federal resource is so that we can ensure our healthcare and public safety officials will have the personal protective equipment they need to continue to serve the residents of. So this is very much again preparedness. This is a proactive measure, and we're doing so to ensure our public health officials and public safety officials have the equipment that they need. There are federal stockpiles of equipment and in order to gain access to those federal stockpiles of equipment. We need to have this declaration this state dec declaration. Um, we feel that our firefighters and our first responders have what they need now, but again, in the hope full never happy situation where there is a massive demand, we want to make sure that we're prepared to meet and health commissioner, and perhaps where officials can talk that about that as well. We're also being very proactive in ramping up our labs capacity. We will be ready to increase testing assumes more kids are available. Our lab is ready. We will test multiple batches a day and run a 24 hour, seven day week operation. To be testing is very, very important. When I look around the globe, when I look at other parts of the country in particular where testing has not been done, there have been problems we're testing has been done. There seems to be a better response to this, So I am going to continue to be as proactive as we can be here to try to get more testing capacity again in the state of Wisconsin. There too official official to governmental testing sites. One is Madison and the state Department of Health, and here it's our department of health as well. I know that there are now some private testing operations in place, but in terms of the public ones is Madison. And here I believe we need a lot more testing capacity. And again, it is my hope that we never use that testing capacity. But we wanna have that. In addition, I want to inform the public that by the end of the week, Lou was staffing a healthcare hotline that will allow individuals to call and talk. The public health nurse is specifically trained to answer questions about the virus and have detailed messaging regarding a Corona virus. We'll have more information on the hotline tomorrow and Friday. Again, I wanna stress our emphasis is on preparation, and it's being proactive. Um, we've also stressed that we've had numerous meetings over the last week. Um, how important is internally to have as much communication cord

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