LANSING, MI - The Ingham County Health Department held a media briefing on Friday, May 1st.

The event went live at 3:45 pm on Zoom to accommodate Governor Gretchen Whitmer's press conference. The press and media were in attendance and was hosted by Health Communication Specialist and Public Information Officer Amanda Darche, MPH and Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail to give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic, along with a special guest Tim Daman, the President & CEO of Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Linda Vail begins with a presentation on the up-to-date information on COVID-19 and says, “As of today, we’ve had 485 cases confirmed in Ingham County, 13 reported deaths, including one reported death today and the other one yesterday. We have 8 people in the hospital with 3 of those in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit.) The rest are home outpatient. We’re showing a case of fatality rates of 2.7 percent.” Vail states that the statistics are based on those who are tested and doesn’t completely account for the cases that haven’t been tested. “We continue to monitor people who have been exposed to travel, or other known risks of contact. Currently 256 of those are active and 464 of those are complete. We’ve had 155 people recovered out of the 485 cases.” Vail said.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Ingham County by sex are 49% male and 51% female that have distributed across the age groups of 30-39 and 50-59 both at 17%. Vail says, “By race were 51% caucasians, 26% African American, 14% Asian, and other by 3%. We look at this by rate and what we see is 114, per thousand for caucasians, 376 for African American, 357 for Asians. We are still tending three times the rate of African Americans, as well as getting in that area for Asians in terms of incidents and rates specific prevalence.”

Vail added, "We are getting lower numbers in the hospital and are now at 91% of our current cases at home, with 2% hospitalized. If we look at the status of all of them, we have 1% in ICU, 32% recovered, going on with a 3% fatality rate and 61% home.”

Tim Daman, the CEO of Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce spoke on strategies on reopening businesses, as well as health concerns moving forward and says, “The extreme disruption of COVID-19 continues to have in our regional and global economy is unprecedented. The largest challenge and impacts for businesses continues to be the cash flow and payroll. There’s a lot of concern right now on the employee side with the furloughs and layoffs that have continued to occur. The most recent numbers are statewide that 1.3 million Michigan residents have filed for unemployment.”

“Another challenge for businesses is going to be on the barriers of reopening. Retaining customers and understanding what’s going to happen to their customer base. Implementing new health code protocols and what it will look like for employers, as they continue to provide a safe and healthy workplace for their employees and customers. We launched and hosted our first relaunch in the greater Lansing economic rehabilitation package taskforce, which includes business leaders, communication leaders, healthcare professionals, and overall subject matter experts.” Daman said.

Daman added, “The goals of this effort is how to build a relaunch strategy for our region and that is when we reopen and how to stay open. How to relaunch with that same energy and sustain the economic growth we had before and still have over $3 billion in economic development and projects. We have to identify those challenges such as the lack of childcare and the impact it has on our workforce as well as transportation issues and build actionable strategies around that. Part of that is rebuilding the trust and how customers are going to access businesses."

The Ingham County Health Department meets twice a week for media briefings on the latest updates on COVID-19 on Tuesdays and Fridays at 3:30pm.