Officials: Virus spike from community spread
A spike in COVID-19 cases in Gratiot County started with community spread that ended in small household clusters, the Mid-michigan District Health Department said.
On July 5, 89 confirmed cases were reported in Gratiot County. By Friday, that number was 97.
“The increase in cases in Gratiot County is due to community spread, mainly within households where a few cases turn into many,” said MMDHD spokeswoman Leslie Kinee in an email.
Community spread is a phrase that generally means an infection for which no obvious source, such as an infected relative or coworker, can be identified. The precise definition is generally left to individual health departments.
The additional cases was enough to push the county into the medium-high risk category in terms of new cases. The seven-day average, as of Saturday, was 27.8 cases per million people. The thresholds for medium-high are between 20 and 40 cases per million people.
In terms of positive test results, the county remains low risk, at 2 percent. The threshold for medium risk is at 3 percent.
None of the cases came from the July 4 party at Isabella County’s Littlefield Lake, where so far 11 additional cases have been confirmed.
Of those 11, 10 were Isabella County residents, said Steve Hall, health officer for Central Michigan District Health Department.
The other person was from Ingham County. No information was immediately available whether
that person had gone on to infect other people.
Until last week, the biggest increases in Gratiot County’s cases were centered on two nursing homes, the Jack F. Saunders Health Care Center of Masonic Pathways, of Alma, and Riverside Health Care Center, of St. Louis. Between residents and staff, the two account for 54 confirmed cases of the disease and 10 of the county’s 14 deaths.
Some of those cases are likely tallied in other counties, however. Infected people are tallied by county of residence, so a nursing home employee who lived in Mt. Pleasant would appear in the Isabella County case count.
Isabella County’s confirmed cases increased to 139 on Tuesday, marking the 49th and 50th new cases in 30 days. No information was available whether these were related to the Littlefield Lake outbreak, new cases at Central Michigan University or at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort, where three employees have tested positive in the last week and a half.
Asked how many cases are connected to casino properties, Raul Venegas, executive director of marketing, entertainment and sales, replied, “I have no comment.”
Eight people in Isabella County have died of COVID-19, at least five of them associated with two nursing home outbreaks.
Another 584 cases were announced Tuesday afternoon by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and another six deaths.
During much of June, the state was announcing fewer than 300 cases a day. That started to creep up again as the state reopened more things. At the height of the outbreak, in the middle of April, the state was announcing more than 1,000 new cases a day.
The number of deaths, on the other hand, is much lower in ratio to the number of cases. For much of April, the death rate hovered right around 10 percent.
With fewer deaths per cases, the state’s overall death rate has fallen to 8.8 percent. It is expected to continue decreasing since testing resources early on were reserved for people in groups at greater risk of dying from the disease. On the other hand, hospitalizations and deaths lag behind new confirmed cases by as many as three weeks.
In the rest of mid-michigan, two additional cases were reported in Clare County for a total of 33, with three deaths; one additional case was reported in Montcalm County for a total of 120, with one death; and five more cases in Midland County for 145 cases, with nine deaths. Mecosta County, with 36 cases and two deaths, and Gladwin County, with 28 cases and one death, both remained unchanged from Monday.