LANSING, MI - The Ingham County Health Department held their weekly media briefing on Tuesday, September 1st at 3:30 pm.

The briefing went live on Zoom with the media in attendance and was hosted by Amanda Darche, along with Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail to provide an update using statistics on the number of COVID-19 cases and to answer questions asked by the press.

Vail began her data presentation characterizing the current statistics, stating there are 1,750 cases in Ingham County since early to mid-March, 40 deaths with 2 over the weekend, along with 6 individuals that are hospitalized with 3 in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). 280 are outpatients at home and 1,424 have recovered. "That gives us a calculated fatality rate to known deaths and confirmed cases to 2.3%,” said Vail.

The hospitalization data was shared displaying the number of cases since the middle of August for the Cumulative and Incidence Curve for people that are in the ICU. Currently there have been 81.4% recovered with 2.3% deceased, 16% are outpatients, and 0.2% of patients are in ICU and the hospital, however based on the cumulative curve the number of cases have increased.

ICHD is still monitoring high risk zip codes such as 48910 and 48911. If looked at by rate, 48911 is still the highest along with 48823, which is East Lansing, and 48864 and 48805 of the Okemos area. There have not been a lot of changes to the county wide heat map to track the virus.

The positive cases in Ingham County has been hovering a lower positivity rate below 3-5% for a while and Vail says, “We’ve tried to press it down and got it back to our baseline we were seeing in the month of June, as well the percent positivity gradually trending downward.”

The confirmed cases in Ingham County (by sex) are 51% male and 49% female within the age group of 20-29 at the highest, while the other age groups are less than half. Looking at the numbers by race, 3% are unknown, 11% other, 9% Asian, 23% Black, and 55% Caucasian. When looked at by a prevalence rates, the Asian population is at 805, African Americans at 1,233, and Caucasian at 445. By ethnicity 81.1% of cases are not Hispanic or Latino, with 10.7% that are, and 8.2% are unknown. The percentage of deaths from COVID in the age group of 80 and over are at 45%, while people in the ages of 70 and under were below 50%.

Vail went over some questions about information that was released from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) where a news story stating 94% of COVID-19 deaths had contributed to health conditions and has caused some misinformation in reporting and thought it was important that the narrative of counting deaths that were not related and been thrown into the mix. Health issues related to those deaths varied from Influenza and Pneumonia, respiratory stress and failure are consequences of the COVID infection, as well as heart failure and Vail said, “Peoples bodies aren’t as strong or able to fight viruses when you have underlying conditions.”

“We’re not over inflating deaths by putting COVID in there. It just means that other things COVID was a related part of death or contributing factor,” said Vail.

The next media briefing will be Tuesday, September 8th, at 3:30 pm.