Whitmer: Restaurants can expand capacity
Nursing home restrictions loosened
Restaurants and bars can increase guest capacity and nursing homes have expanded visitation under changes to two state health department epidemic orders.
The changes were announced during a press conference by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Under the changes, bars and restaurants can now operate at 50 percent capacity, a doubling of what it has been, up to 100 people. The 10 p.m. curfew was changed to 11 p.m.
Tables must still be kept six feet away from each other, and no more than six people are allowed at each one.
Nursing homes are now permitted visitors if the facility hasn’t had a positive COVID-19 test within 14 days and rapid testing indicates that visitors 13 and older aren’t infected.
She announced the changes based on improvement in three critical metrics: Cases weighted for population, test positivity and hospital capacity.
Michigan’s cases per 1 million people is currently 91.2, similar to where the state was at the beginning of October, according to a Michigan State Police press release. The percentage of diagnostic tests that return a positive result has 3.7 percent, a slight increase from last week but also close to where the state was in early October. Hospital capacity dedicated to COVID-19 is now at 3.9 percent.
Isabella, Gratiot and Clare counties have been better than statewide averages in all three for at least a week.
The press release also touted increased vaccine availability.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of a third vaccine on Monday, this one from Johnson & Johnson.
It is a one-shot vaccine that uses weakened adenovirus, a virus not known to cause severe disease in people, to stimulate an immune response. In addition to only requiring one shot, it also doesn’t need to be kept in freezers.
Tuesday, the administration of President Biden announced that Johnson & Johnson has partnered with Merck, which abandoned its own COVID-19 vaccine program, to manufacture more vaccine doses. That is expected to ramp up availability of the vaccine drastically.
Just four new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in Isabella County on Tuesday.
Three were in Isabella County, which now has a cumulative total number of 3,576 confirmed cases, with 72 deaths. One new confirmed case was reported in Gratiot County, which now has a cumulative total number of 2,461 cases, with 99 deaths. No deaths were reported in either county.
No new cases or deaths were reported in Clare County, which has a cumulative total number of 1,404 confirmed cases, with 68 deaths.
Elsewhere in mid-michigan, one new death was reported in one counties, with new and cumulative cases and deaths as follows:
• In Gladwin County, one additional confirmed cases was reported for a cumulative total of 1,252, with 39 deaths;
• In Mecosta County, one new death was reported for a total of 20, and an additional six cases were reported for a cumulative total of 1,924, with 19 deaths;
• In Midland County, an additional 11 cases were reported for a cumulative total of 4,432, with 62 deaths; and,
• In Montcalm County, an additional three cases were reported for a cumulative total of 3,255, with 86 deaths.
Statewide, another 24 deaths were reported for a total of 15,558 and another 1,067 cases were reported for a cumulative total of 590,217.