LANSING, MI - The Ingham County Health Departments held their second live media briefing this afternoon and went live at 3:30 pm.

The event was closed to the public while the press and media were in attendance during the stream, it was hosted by Health Communication Specialist and Public Information Officer Amanda Darche MPH and Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail was also present to give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Linda Vail began by giving a situational update mentioning the MHAA website and reported 18,970 cases now from the 1749 cases, 845 deaths are up by 118 from yesterday. Vail also presented the statistics graph showing numbers in regards of confirmed cases, reported deaths, as well as people being monitored, recovering, hospitalized, and at home while recovering.

Daily case counts dating back to March 10 were also displayed fluctuating back and forth and has been on the rise since March 25. Vail states that some of the cases that were reported by the state today were actually cases from Monday, April 6 and today is a work in progress. The presentation also displayed demographic statistics with genders displaying the number of cases between genders with COVID-19 in Ingham County with females being at 51% and males at 49%. She also stated the age group of people between the ages of 60 - 69 are the highest risk group.

When looking at demographics and the southeast part of our state, different ethnicities are impacted by COVID-19, especially African Americans, and have a rate of prevalence that is three times higher than the Caucasian population and a large percent of African Americans populations are in poverty and impacts them as their incomes aren’t as high. Vail says, “The other thing we know is because of racial construct in our economy, there is an amount of underlying stress that people of color live with and when their stress levels are high, it infects their immune systems and makes them more likely to be infected. Another example of lifetime stress in people of color is mother’s and why they're more likely to have adverse maternal mortality as well as infant mortality. A lot of that comes from inherit stress that goes on in the body and not at the time of the pregnancy, but is cumulative during the lifetime that has those affects on people. This is hitting our African American population harder in both cases and deaths.”

A link to the presentation during this briefing can be found on the Ingham County Health Department website.

The next media briefing will be held on Friday, April 10 at 3:30 pm.