By Allison Donahue, Michigan Advance
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) reported Wednesday that a total of 446,752 Michiganders have tested positive for COVID-19 and 11,018 have died from the virus — an additional 4,037 cases and 83 deaths since Tuesday.
DHHS also reports that an additional 36,063 Michiganders have been identified as “probable” cases for COVID-19, as well as 570 probable deaths. The department began tracking probable cases on April 5. Combining the state’s confirmed positive cases with probable cases brings the total up to 482,815 statewide cases and 11,588 deaths.
According to a recent COVID-19 data update from Sarah Lyon-Callo, director of the DHHS Bureau of Epidemiology and Population Health, Michigan has the fifth-highest number of deaths in the last seven days, only behind Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and California. Last week, Michigan had the fourth-highest number of deaths.
Michigan has also dropped in the ranking for highest number of COVID-19 cases in the last seven days, from eighth-highest to fourteenth-highest. Michigan is behind California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana and Georgia in case numbers.
Data show that Michigan’s case rates have been decreasing the last three weeks, but the state’s percent positivity has plateaued for the past four weeks.
Michigan has the 12th-highest hospitalization rate as a percent of total beds, after having the sixth highest hospitalization rate last week. The report states that 18.5% of available beds in Michigan are filled by COVID-19 patients and state trends for hospitalizations for COVID-19 have plateaued in the last week.
The state’s COVID-19 fatality rate is at 2.5%.
The virus has been detected in all of Michigan’s 83 counties and 61 counties saw positivity rates in the double digits in the last week.
Keweenaw remains the only county in the state with total case numbers lower than 100. The majority of counties have caseloads in the thousands.
Confirmed case numbers in Genesee, Ottawa, Washtenaw, Ingham and Saginaw counties are above 10,000; and Oakland, Wayne, Macomb and Kent counties all have caseloads over 20,000.
The first two cases of COVID-19 were reported in the state on March 10. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency that day.
Johns Hopkins University reports that there are more than 73.9 million confirmed cases worldwide and 1.6 million deaths. The United States makes up a significant portion of those, as more than 16.8 million confirmed cases and 305,723 deaths have been recorded nationally.
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