MILWAUKEE— As of Thursday, Jefferson County in Wisconsin was one of 20 counties where the Wisconsin Department of Health Services considered the spread of COVID-19 to be "critically high."

"[Hospitals across Wisconsin are having to deal with very strained capacity and having to divert patients 100-200 miles away," Samroz Jakvani, an epidemiologist with the Jefferson County Health Department, said.

As various county health departments across Wisconsin now struggle with contact tracing in the midst of the ongoing case spike and altered hours because of the holidays, Jakvani expects the COVID-19 situation to get worse here before it gets better.

"Our best guess is that the next six weeks are going to be worse than it is right now," Jakvani said. "Things are bad, they're going to get worse. We anticipate that over the next 6-8 weeks it will get worse before it starts to get better. Hopefully we will be in a much better place in February than where we are now."

You can watch the entire interview above.