Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has urged residents to “double down” on pandemic health practices, but resisted calls from top public health officials to reimpose restrictions to combat a surge in coronavirus infections and hospitals that are almost at capacity.
In offering an explanation for why new case rates and hospitalisations across the state have soared, the Democratic governor said Michigan did not “have a policy problem” that demanded tighter curbs on businesses and gatherings, but instead was faced with a “variant and compliance problem”.
Michigan had been “successful for a long period of time at pushing Covid rates down”, which has now left it with “reservoirs of people who were kept safe for long periods of time who don’t have antibodies” are are now being exposed to more contagious variants of coronavirus, Whitmer said at a press conference on Wednesday. Residents are also “abandoning” health protocols and travelling more and further, she added.
Whitmer asked residents to “double down on what we know works”, referring to health guidelines such as wearing masks, physical distancing, washing hands and getting vaccinated.
Some top public health officials said the state needed to do more. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Monday said Michigan should impose restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus across the state.
The state has averaged about 552 new cases per 100,000 people a day over the past week, according to CDC data on Wednesday. That is the highest per capita rate in the US and compares to a rate of about 305 in second-ranked Rhode Island and the median of all states at about 121.5.
Whitmer said about “two dozen hospitals are at 90 per cent capacity or higher”, while Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said about 18 per cent of hospital beds statewide are being used to treat coronavirus patients.
The state is also a hotspot for B.1.1.7, a more infectious strain of Covid-19 first identified late last year in the UK that is now the most prevalent strain in the US. According to the CDC, 57.6 per cent of genomes sequenced in Michigan in the four weeks ended March 27 were the B.1.1.7 stain, the second highest proportion in the US after Tennessee at 60.5 per cent. Earlier this week, the CDC had tallied 2,262 confirmed cases of B.1.1.7 in Michigan, second only to the 3,510 in Florida.
Whitmer was asked to respond to local media reports that the head of the state’s health department, Elizabeth Hertel, went on holiday to Alabama last week despite urging Michiganders to stay at home to help control a surge in new infections. The governor said there had never been travel restrictions in the state and that “what directors do on their personal time is their own business as long as they are safe”.
