On March 10, 2020 — a sunny day that suggested a bright spring to come — Madison school administrators, board members, students and reporters crammed into an elementary school library to hear from the man hired by the Madison School District to be its next superintendent.
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Madison educators, including some outside La Follette High School, staged a "teach out" on Thursday to protest the decision to begin returning the district's youngest students to school before teachers have been vaccinated.
How the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in Madison and Wisconsin
Jan. 30, 2020: After a trip to Beijing, a Dane County resident shows up at UW Hospital's emergency room, becoming the first person in Wisconsin and 12th in the nation to test positive for a novel coronavirus gripping China.
March 11, 2020: In a banner date locally and nationally, UW-Madison announces plans to temporarily suspend in-person classes and empty out dorms on the same day the viral outbreak is declared a pandemic.
March 13, 2020: In the most drastic mitigation measure yet, Gov. Tony Evers orders all public and private schools to shutter within five days, the first of several statewide restrictions in the coming days.
March 19, 2020: Wisconsin records the first of what would eventually become thousands of deaths in the pandemic after two men fall victim to the virus.
March 25, 2020: In the most sweeping measure yet, Evers' "safer at home" order takes effect, which shutters "nonessential" businesses, urges residents to stay home and eventually becomes the target of Republican-led legal challenges.
April 15, 2020: Evers signs the first and only pandemic-related legislation of the year to come out of the Republican-held state Legislature before bipartisan cooperation breaks down over an extension of the "safer at home" order.
May 11, 2020: Free community testing for COVID-19 begins at the Alliant Energy Center.
May 13, 2020: Along ideological lines, the Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down the "safer at home" order, limiting the Evers administration's ability to implement future statewide orders. Restrictions are put in place immediately in Dane County and other places. But elsewhere, people flood the bars.
May 26, 2020: After more than two months of shutdowns, Dane County's "nonessential" businesses are allowed to partially reopen as local restrictions begin to slowly ease.
July 13, 2020: A local face mask mandate by the joint city-county health department takes effect for all of Dane County. Bending to increasing public pressure, Evers later issues a statewide mask rule.
Sept. 9, 2020: As cases surge on campus, UW-Madison takes its most drastic step to preserve a semblance of a regular semester by moving all classes online and quarantining two dorms for two weeks.
Dec. 14, 2020: Ten UW Health employees are among the first in Wisconsin to get the country’s first approved vaccine as the nationwide inoculation effort gets underway.
Jan. 25, 2021: Joining frontline health care employees and other groups, Wisconsin residents age 65 and older become eligible for the vaccine, marking the first shift to getting the shots in the arms of the general public.
Feb. 4, 2021: An hour after Assembly Republicans vote to strike down the statewide mask mandate, Evers issues a new, identical order to maintain the protective mask rule.
March 1, 2021: Dane County's victims of the pandemic are remembered and honored during a "day of remembrance" as the vaccine eligibility expands to teachers and others.
