Trips from dorms to bars played critical role in UW-Madison’s COVID-19 outbreak, study finds in analysis of cellphone data

Bars played a critical role in University of Wisconsin-Madison’s coronavirus outbreak this fall, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

Shortly after trips to a cluster of bars near Witte and Sellery residence halls spiked in early September, the two dorms saw large outbreaks of COVID-19, MIT economics professor and physician Jeffrey Harris found in a recent study.