Pine River, Coe among COVID-FREE townships
Vast swaths of geography across mid-michigan remains free of confirmed COVID-19 cases, including Pine River Township in Gratiot County and Coe Township in Isabella County. That means, currently, the village of Shepherd is COVID-FREE.
Other counties in Isabella County with no cases include Wise, Fremont, Denver, Nottawa and Coldwater. Gratiot’s 13 cases are concentrated into just a few places. Aside from Pine River, townships with no active cases include North Shade, Washington, Elba, Hamilton, New Haven, Seville, Wheeler, Lafayette, Arcada and Newark.
In Clare County, the following townships are also free of COVID-19 cases: Lincoln, Hatten, Arthur, Surrey, Grant, Sheridan, Summerfield and Greenwood.
Health departments have
started to release more pinpointed data about where cases are being located with population density maps and information about who is sick in what county, if they are hospitalized and who the health department is tracking as a probable case.
Two people are currently hospitalized in Isabella County, one who is between 50-74 years old and one who is older than 75. None of the other counties within the Central Michigan District Health Department geography reports anyone hospitalized. Those are Clare, Roscommon, Arenac, Osceola and Gladwin counties.
The Mid-michigan District Health Department, to which Gratiot County belongs, doesn’t have that data on its website.
The health department’s webpage was updated Wednesday afternoon and had Isabella County at 60 confirmed cases. In the Thursday afternoon statewide update from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, that number grew by one to 61. Seven people have died from COVID-19 in the county.
The state reported one more death in Midland County, which has 59 cases, for a total of five deaths. Montcalm added two cases for 40, with one death. Gratiot, 13 cases and one death; Clare, 11 cases and one death; Mecosta, 14 cases and one death, all remained unchanged. Gladwin County’s total was revised downward one to 15 cases and one death.
Across the state, 79 people were reported as having died overnight of the disease and another 40 were listed as dead from it after a review of vital records, for a total of 119 new deaths with a cumulative total of 3,789. The state added 980 new cases for a total of 41,379.
West Michigan continued to be the latest hot spot, with Kent County increasing its cases by 84 to 1,479. No additional deaths were reported there overnight, leaving that number at 33.
Kent County is the population center of the West Michigan Regional Medical Consortium, which includes Isabella, Clare, Mecosta and Montcalm counties. The consortium is a coalition of counties that can provide resources to each other if an emergency strains resources in one place.
Other coalition counties with double-digit increases include Ottawa, adding 12 for a total of 236; Muskegon, adding 14 for a total of 276; and Ionia, adding 16 for a total of 76. Ottawa has reported nine deaths, 17 in Muskegon and two in Ionia.