The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are advising residents of Grand Traverse County to wear masks in public indoor spaces.
Grand Traverse is now considered to have “high” levels of transmission. The CDC's criteria includes new cases per one hundred thousand, new COIVD-19 hospitalizations, and the rise in the number of hospital beds holding COVID-19 patients.
According to the Grand Traverse County Health Department, last week, the seven-day case average was 29 and there are currently 492 active cases at a 15% test positivity rate.
"There's still plenty of people that are being infected," said Dr. Joshua Meyerson, medical director for the Health Department of Northwest Michigan. "And we want to keep that from landing on someone who's especially vulnerable. So, I think, right now, when we look at those transmission levels, they are high."
Meyerson added that transmission rates have been climbing for the past several weeks due to the rise of the BA two variant of Omicron.
"Given that new BA two variant of Omicron was in Europe and caused a surge there, now we're seeing that here as well. And the modeling, predicting that it would continue to increase here, at least, kind of through the middle of this month," Dr. Meyerson said.
But Dr. Joshua Meyerson says the numbers are likely higher, especially with the rise of at-home test kits, which were not as readily available during other phases of the pandemic. Now, they're a part of everyday life for many families.
Dr. Meyerson commented that we need to view case numbers in a slightly different way than we did in the early phases of the pandemic.
"The number itself isn't as important as what direction is it going? Where are we headed? And because we know that that's just, you know, a measure, it's not every case, and we don't need to have every case, it's really a surveillance tool," said Meyerson.