Isabella accounts for quarter of region’s new cases

Isabella County has 12 new infections of 45 new in MidMichigan; 1,095 statewide

Cases of COVID-19 increasedacrossmid-michigan by 45 Friday, with more than one quarter of them coming from just one place: Isabella County.

Isabella County’s cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases increased by 12 Friday, with some evidence that the disease is spreading at Centralmichigan University. The university’s COVID-19 dashboard reported 27 new cases of the disease the two preceding days.

Twelve new cases were reported Wednesday and 15 were reported on Thursday. Before that, the number of cases hadmoved along at an average rate of approximately three or four formuch of September and early October.

Just how many of Friday’s cases come from the university won’t be known until next week. CMU’S dashboard is usually a day or two behind the present day. No one reports numbers over the

weekend.

CMU’S return-to- campus outbreak, from midAugust to early September, accounted for a large chunk of Isabella County’s cumulative cases. As of Friday, with the 12 new cases, the county has recorded a cumulative total 718 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with another 92 probable cases. Fifteen people have died.

This week has seen a large- enough increase in cases that the county’s seven- day rolling average increased from 8.4 per 100,000 to 12.5 on the Harvard Global Health Initiative’s county- level COVID- 19 case dashboard. The county is currently coded orange, rep

resenting the secondmost serious metrics for disease spread, on that dashboard’s Michigan map.

With an average incubation period of five days, this week’s new cases are unrelated to last Friday’s court ruling that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order mandating masks in public places. Onmonday, that order was replaced by one from themichigan Department of Health and Human Services, citing a different law.

Another eight of the region’s new cases came in Clare, which last week was considered one of the state’s safest counties, according to the HGHI dashboard. Clare’s confirmed cases have increased by 20 in three days, however, and as of Friday stood at 125, with another 11 probable cases.

Last Friday, Clare County had a rolling seven- day average of .9 cases per 100,000 people. That increased to 6 per 100,000 as of Friday, moving the county fromgreen, the color used for the safest counties, to yellow, the second lowest-risk color.

With a hospitalization rate of 15 percent, that means that it is likely that three of those 20 cases will involve hospitalization of some kind. Six people have died in Clare County.

Seven of the region’s 35 new confirmed cases were ingratiot County, for a cumulative total of 298. Another 43 cases are considered probable. Sixteen people have died there.

That is close to the county’s current seven- day rolling average of 7.7 cases per 100,000, according to the HGHI dashboard. That is down from 10.5 from last

week.

Six more cases were reported in Mecosta County for a cumulative total of 269, with three deaths; five more cases were reported in Montcalm County for a cumulative total of 358, with seven deaths; four new cases were reported in Gladwin County for a cumulative total of 110, with two deaths; and three new cases were reported in Midland County for a cumulative total of 589. One new death was reported in Midland County, bringing its total to 13.

Statewide, another 1,095 cases were announced by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for a cumulative total of 133,134, with 14,682 more cases considered probable. Seven new deaths were announced for a total of 6,876.