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Michigan’s coronavirus cases are trending in the right direction - for now

Michigan National Guard

Today we’re continuing our weekly snapshot of activity around coronavirus and Covid-19 cases in Michigan.

Ben Thorp talked with Epidemiologist, Dr. Emily Martin about the good news, bad news, and trajectory for coronavirus In Michigan

First…. The good news.

Ben: The messaging out of the state was I think fairly positive just in terms of what we’re seeing in terms of the trending cases and the hospitalizations with the major caveat that we don’t know yet what the impact of the holidays will be. What are you seeing on your end?

Emily: It’s too early to see what the impact of the holidays is. It’s still going to take us a couple of days to see if there was a slowdown because there wasn’t a lot of testing over the holidays to do it a little more cautiously paid off. We’re hopeful but we need to keep watching.

Ben: What’s the bad news here?

Emily: The bad news is hospitalizations are still too high to handle comfortably. Some of that is because even if things do slow down it takes hospitalizations a while to improve. Just the overall level is too high. It’s a lot for the hospitals to handle but also we’re seeing a lot of people in the workforce are getting sick and are having isolation or quarantine. So we’re having problems fully staffing people.