INGHAM COUNTY, MI - The Ingham County Health Department held their weekly media briefing on Wednesday, July 22nd.

The briefing went live at 4:00 pm on Zoom with the media in attendance and was hosted by Health Communication Specialist and Public Information Officer Amanda Darche, MPH and Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail to provide an update on the number of COVID-19 cases using statistics, as well as answer questions from the media.

Health Officer Vail began her data presentation characterizing the current statistics stating there are 1,265 cases, 29 deaths, along with one individual that is hospitalized. 380 are outpatients at home and 855 have recovered. "The case fatality rate is a calculation based on confirmed cases. Monitoring is still happening on the level of the state and that has to do with people that have been exposed and are in quarantine,” said Vail.

In terms of status, 0.1% were in the hospital, 30% at home, 67.6% recovered, and 2.3% deceased based on the cumulative curve of COVID-19 cases by date of onset with the significant spike going up in mid-June, Vail is waiting for the curve to plateau out again, as well as the daily incidence curve.

ICHD is using a county wide map displaying hotspots to track the virus with demographics by zip code, sex, age, prevalence, and ethnicity. 48911 still the highest in rate, along with 48823 and followed by 48910. By sex females are at 49% and males at 51%. The age groups that ranged the highest were ages 20-29 at 31% with a demographic shift that has happened in the last month and have doubled the amount of cases in that group compared to other age groups. 14% between the ages of 30-39, and 13% by ages 40-49 and 50-59 in the county.

“If looked at by rate instead of by percent knowing that we don’t have the same prevalence of a population within our total populations, we have to adjust for that. The number of cases by race are 25% African American, 54% Caucasian, 11% Asian, with other at 8% and 3% unknown. The rate by prevalence for Caucasians is at 316, three times as much with African Americans population at 945, and two and half of those numbers in the Asian population at 714. If we look at it by ethnicity, we have 82.9% of our cases that are not Hispanic or Latino and 9.1% that are and we’re down to 7.8% unknown. By rate people who are not Hispanic and Latino are at 231.4 and people who are within that ethnicity are 351.2,” Vail said.

After the presentation, Vail was asked about food handling services such as Harper's Restaurant and Brewpub back in mid-June, as well as safety concerns with a reopening plan to go back to school and what the health department is recommending and says, “The number of cases that have plateaued to a 187 cases and are the past the rounds of incubation periods for any primary cases and approaching that for secondary cases. If another case gets added to it, it will be from something that got connected after the fact or after a late test result coming in. 43 out of those 187 were secondary transmissions."

Vail told everyone in attendance that she has seen the return plan for schools reopening and said, “We have had health officers that are part of the task force and there was local public health voiced. The school districts are responsible for those plans and we’re here to help them and give advice. It is their plans under the guidance of the return plan that has been issued by the governor’s office and helping them make sure that they’re doing all the right things and not have outbreaks in schools, and we quickly respond if we start to have cases in school and contain them. In this difficult situation is the virtual learning that is safer in terms with infectious disease and how do you deal with some of the disparities that are likely to happen when you go to virtual learning and expect parents to do a lot of heavy lifting regarding children, and might have jobs or be teachers themselves and there’s a lot to be worked out.”

The next media briefing will be Tuesday, July 28th, at 3:30pm.