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Effect of Last Month's Election on Coronavirus Cases Unknown

Thursday, May 7th, 2020 -- 10:06 AM

(AP) -Wisconsin’s presidential primary election held last month in the face of the coronavirus pandemic drew concern from doctors, voters, poll workers and politicians who warned that having thousands of people leave their homes to cast ballots would further spread the highly contagious virus.

Now well beyond the 14-day incubation period for COVID-19, and with a Tuesday special congressional election in northern Wisconsin looming, it remains largely unknown just how many people contracted the virus at the polls on April 7. “We lack the scientific tools and infrastructure to really measure the impact reliably,” said Kristen Malecki, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “If we were able to test everybody, then we would absolutely be able to say whether (there was a surge) or not.” It will likely never be known just how safe, or not, it was to vote, public health leaders said. Malecki and other health experts said it’s nearly impossible to quantify the impact COVID-19 had on those who showed up at the polls because of a lack of testing and contact tracing, the work of determining who an infected person has been around.

In addition, some people are infected but have no symptoms and therefore don’t get tested at all. Sixty-seven people who tested positive for COVID-19 since April 7 reported that they had been at the polls, but state health officials have warned against assuming that’s how they became infected since many of them had also been other places where they could have been exposed. The state intends to stop asking people who tested positive after Thursday whether they were at the polls because the 14-day incubation period of the virus has long since passed. They are also not counting anyone who was at the polls but who didn’t show symptoms until after April 21.

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