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Michigan was making good progress in controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and getting people vaccinated this year when, as one public health expert said, the state began to “lift the brakes.”
Now the number of Covid-19 cases is on the rise and hospitalization rates have risen, and on Sunday the state reported that its pandemic test positivity rate had reached 15.64%, the highest percentage in one day since December 2.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer admitted that the deterioration in numbers did not look good.
“It’s a stark reminder that this virus is still very real,” Whitmer, a Democrat, said last week. “He can come back roaring if we let our guard down.”
But as more Michigan residents are vaccinated – especially the most vulnerable elderly – Whitmer has done nothing to reimpose Covid-19 restrictions on residents who are already feeling what the public health expert Marianne Udow-Phillips called it “pandemic fatigue”.
Whitmer, whose team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, need not recall that some of the fiercest resistance to statewide lockdowns were in Michigan – she has ended up being the target of what authorities called a right-wing kidnapping plot.
Besides Michigan, the number of Covid-19 cases has risen sharply in states like Hawaii, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut, prompting the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to warn of “impending doom” if Americans do not continue to take safety precautions.
Michigan’s hotspot for the new cases has been the conservative counties north of Detroit, an area known as Thumb, a stronghold of Trump voters that has been particularly resistant to pandemic restrictions and mask warrants.
But now the number of cases is starting to rise statewide, as is the age of the latest victims, said Josh Petrie, an assistant research professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.
“While new cases tend to be younger in this month’s increase, cases are now increasing rapidly in all age groups under 60,” Petrie said. Likewise, while some of the largest case counts by population were on record in Thumb region counties this month, we are seeing an increase in cases statewide.
What is behind the trend?
“For the state as a whole, we are seeing an increase in non-essential travel and trips outside the home that are approaching pre-pandemic levels,” Petrie said. “Certainly, less mask wearing and social distancing will increase the risk of transmission.”
Udow-Phillips, who heads the Center for Health Research Transformation at the University of Michigan, said, “It’s hard to determine anything. Yes, we are seeing the more infectious variants. But we are also doing more testing. . “
What is clear, Udow-Phillips said, is that Covid-19 infections began to spread after the state allowed restaurants to resume indoor dining this year, “and there has had an even greater growth in cases directly related to the return of youth sports. “
“It doesn’t happen in the field,” Udow-Phillips said of the infections. “It happens during transport and after, when people get together and eat and don’t wear masks. It happens at parties and where people socialize. For months we had been very careful, but when the brakes came off, cases started to climb again. “
This is reflected in statistics from a new analysis from media company MLive, the publisher of several Michigan newspapers.
Three weeks ago, the largest increase in new cases was among people aged 10 to 19 and 20 to 29, according to the figures. Last week, the 20-29 age group was way ahead of teens, followed by those 30-39 and 40-49.
“We’re definitely seeing the impact of St. Patrick’s Day,” Emily Toth Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told MLive.
The increase in new infections has, over the past three weeks, been much smaller in people aged 60 and older, a phenomenon the Michigan Health and Hospital Association attributed to the success of generalized immunization in the elderly. .
In Michigan, 14.64% of the population has already been fully vaccinated, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. And while that puts Michigan at 30th nationally, the state still does a better job of putting the needle in the arms than Pennsylvania, California, Texas, New York or Florida.
About 65 percent of Michigan residents over 65 have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while about 45 percent are fully immunized, the Detroit Hospital Association and NBC WDIV affiliate reported.
Does this reduce the chances that Michigan will be hit by another wave of Covid-19 deaths?
“We can hope it does,” Petrie said in an email. “However, as noted above, this is not only affecting young people and we are starting to see hospitalizations increasing rapidly. The increase in deaths often delays cases by weeks, so we are not out of the woods yet. “
Since the start of the pandemic, Michigan has recorded nearly 733,000 infections and more than 17,000 deaths, according to statistics from NBC News.
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