Wisconsin activates field hospital as COVID keeps surging
Source: AP news
Wisconsin health officials announced Wednesday that a field hospital is opening in the coming days at the state fairgrounds near Milwaukee as a surge in COVID-19 cases threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
Wisconsin has become a hot spot for the disease over the last month, ranking third nationwide this week in daily new cases per capita. Health experts have attributed the spike to the reopening of colleges and K-12 schools as well as general fatigue over wearing masks and socially distancing.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ office said in a statement that the facility will open for patients within the next week.
“We hoped this day wouldn’t come, but unfortunately, Wisconsin is in a much different, more dire place today and our healthcare systems are beginning to become overwhelmed by the surge of COVID-19 cases,” Evers said in the statement. “This alternative care facility will take some of the pressure off our healthcare facilities while expanding the continuum of care for folks who have COVID-19.”
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-milwaukee-wisconsin-archive-61856a69ec6e9e6f032bb121b6d58a5d
The move also came as a state judge was considering a lawsuit seeking to strike down Evers’ mandate that masks be worn in enclosed public spaces.
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to use as an "overflow". The expectation was to transfer some of the routine hospital patients there to free up beds for the sickest and COVID patients. Fortunately the complete state shutdown helped to stave off here, what was happening in NY, and I believe (based on the daily pressers I tuned into back then) our facility had up to about 6 (concurrent) patients, although per this article, they had apparently had 14 (which might be total for the timeframe as of last May before winding down). The surge facility had been set up at Temple University's Liacouras Center -
One of the unexpected issues that popped up here (and probably at other places that set up surge facilities) was that apparently insurance companies don't consider such a facility a "hospital" so then the doctors caring for those patients couldn't bill the insurance companies for their care in one. That resulted in hospitals being reticent about sending patients to them in the first place. 
I thought he couldn't do that because of the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Note that Wisconsin is the 3rd hottest hotspot in the U.S in daily new cases PER CAPITA, 7 day moving average. (North Dakota and South Dakota are #1 and #2 in that metric)
Gov. Tony Evers issued an emergency order Tuesday limiting public indoor gatherings to 25% occupancy after Wisconsin became one of the nation’s COVID hotspots.
The order applies to any gathering open to the public including stores, restaurants, bars, other businesses, and spaces with ticketed events. It also applies to indoor, non-religious funerals, weddings and receptions that are open to the public.
There are some spaces that are exempt from the order like colleges and universities, child care settings, health care and public health operations, religious events, political events and more.
The changes will take effect at 8 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, and will remain in place until Nov. 6.
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported an increase of 2,020 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 18 new deaths. The seven-day average of new daily COVID-19 cases is 2,346 – up from 836 one month ago.
More: https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/wis-gov-evers-issues-order-limiting-public-indoor-gatherings-to-25-occupancy-after-covid-surge/
50 states' minicharts "map" page, alternative to the NY Times from John Hopkins University
The below "map" of the 50 states' minicharts (which are scaled by daily new cases PER CAPITA), is from the John Hopkins U. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states -- at that page you can click on individual states on the "map". Showing 3-day moving average of new cases. I prefer the nytimes' charts which are 7 day moving averages)
And here in PA, we have 2.5 times the population and have edged up to 1000+ cases a day again. I think our highest daily figure during the peak in mid-April was just under 2000 or just around that.
I discovered that Johns Hopkins has a little youtube video of the viral hotspots "in motion" - published here https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/covid-19-daily-video (apparently they are generating these daily - paid for by Bloomberg's philanthropies).
and one of the concerns now is that outside of the continued college clusters (Penn State's main campus is still going rogue by continuing to do in-person classes while the case counts rise more and more and they quarantine more and more students) and lower schools that have attempted in-person or hybrid models, there is apparently some diffuse community spread happening again.
And I think like the outbreak in Ocean County, NJ, some of the cases here in Philly are related to the gatherings that happened during the 2 Jewish holidays - Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (9/18 - 9/20 and 9/27 - 9/28) respectively, since we have a significant Jewish population here (not all observant but quite a few do celebrate some of the holidays, and the schools are off during that time as well).
That makes me really concerned about what might happen at Thanksgiving or Christmas. 
I'm not sure where PA is headed but I am hoping it is just a temporary thing here, possibly related to events associated with the Jewish holidays (in addition to knowing a bunch of the cases are still being generated by college clusters).
However since the GOP's obsession with opening the big high school and college stadiums is strong here, I can see where, despite being "outside", if there is no social-distancing in those large stadiums (which would be hard to enforce), then second wave here we come.
