On Tuesday, during a press conference conducted over Zoom, Ingham County Health Department (ICHD) officials announced that two of the houses that were recently put into mandatory quarantine will be released from that order.
The mandatory quarantine was put into effect due to a severe outbreak of COVID-19 in the area. The ICHD was able to locate specific areas where COVID-19 is most concentrated. The 48823 zip code has more than double the case count of the next highest zip code, 48911. Many, but not all, of the cases are located at fraternity and sorority houses at Michigan State University (MSU.)
Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail said, “At this point, we are counting officially approximately 550 cases in the month of September attributed to MSU related cases.”
Vail went on to sketch how serious the outbreak is in the larger community.
Vail said, “We have about 980 cases in the month of September alone. It is September 15th. So about 40% of our cases since March-- when this all started-- happened in the last two weeks.”
However, the mandatory quarantine was lifted for two houses on Burcham Street.
243 Burcham Street was removed from the list when it was discovered that the MSU student who was thought to be living there was in fact not living at the residence, and may have had the residence still listed in the system as their address for a number of reasons.
229 Burcham was removed after a conversation with the person in charge of the residents revealed that the individuals who had tested positive for COVID-19 had done so early in the month of September and had immediately gone home to self-quarantine. The last exposure would then be far enough off to give the ICHD confidence in pulling the address off the mandatory quarantine list.
“I will tell you that I also got a list of properties from East Lansing of all properties licensed to have 10 or more people living in the same place," Vail added. "This is what we call a congregate setting. And so we will probably be adding places to that quarantine list.”
Click here to access the updated mandatory quarantine locations list.
