LANSING, Mich. — The worst of the Omicron surge seems to be over. The number of weekly COVID-19 cases in Michigan has declined by 75 percent in Ingham County. In Michigan overall, they have declined by 67 percent.
“We've dropped down to basically where we were when Delta kind of was rising, and then Omicron took off," said Ingham County Health Department Officer Linda Vail. "So, we're still fairly high, but we're back down to where we were the end of the year before Omicron hit the area. So that's about a 75% decrease we've seen in cases in the last two weeks."
Vail says this is a pattern we see around the world. "It was the largest surge that we've seen in terms of peeking out at numbers, but it also drops down and plummets very quickly.”
In fact, Ingham County had 18,000 cases in 2022 so far compared to less than 13,000 cases in 2021.
In 2021, Ingham County's total number of cases was 30,000. A death rate of 1.6 percent went down to 0.4 percent so far this year, even though December and January have been two of the top three months of COVID deaths since the pandemic. The reason for the high number of deaths is the disproportionately high number of cases because of the Omicron surge.
“We are coming off some of the highest case study numbers we've had through the pandemic. So we are optimistic that our rates in the last 10 to 14 days are decreasing," said Liz Braddock, a Mid-Michigan District health officer. "That's really good news. And we're hoping that this will continue."
Both Vail and Braddock say the hope is instead of seeing another surge in April, like last year, COVID could enter an endemic phase, where it peaks and becomes more manageable.
Vail says cases would then be expected to go down year by year between vaccination immunity and natural immunity.
“Now, with the Omicron, you still are better off having that vaccine, in addition to natural immunity, it's a more robust immunity, the two combined actually seem to work synergistically together,” Vail said.
Vail believes mask mandates across the state and in schools will be lifted more and more but hopes that Michigan would adopt wearing masks during respiratory virus seasons like other countries.
“(Masks) do help, they're not perfect, but they do basically stop what we call source control, they create source control," Vail said. So, droplets and things that are coming out of somebody who's potentially infected are minimized in terms of their ability to infect other people."
Vail pointed out that we are gradually seeing the state hand responsibilities over to the public when it comes to isolating, contacting people about exposure, and possibly soon when it comes to wearing masks. She says there is a new mutation, but she doesn’t have any information at this time.
You can take a look at Michigan's risk levels here.
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