All of the latest statistics involving the continuing Coronavirus are bad in Allegan County, except in one category — deaths.
Michigan has been identified as one of the five states that account for half of the Covid cases across the U.S., but Allegan County’s death toll has remained at 118, the same as it was six weeks ago.
Hospitalization numbers across the state have made an alarming leap over the past several weeks in Michigan and the number of new cases reported Tuesday, April 6, was barely below 5,000. The county is reporting 203 hospitalized as of Tuesday and 8,652 cases.
The seven-day daily average of cases has exceeded 50 while last Feb. 21 it was just 7.7. And positivity rates in testing is greater than double digits.
There have been no deaths reported by the Allegan County Health Department in the past five weeks, but 505 cases have been reported in the past two weeks and the positivity rate has reached 10.7 percent. The number of hospitalizations is 199 and the number of deaths has remained at 118.
The latest surge is suspected to have gotten under way since March 1 after school districts returned to in-person learning and winter sports resumed, including basketball and wrestling, regarded as two of the greatest risk for spreading the virus.
Superintendents from schools all over the county last month issued a plea to students and parents to strictly observe Covid safety protocols during spring break, which got under way April 4. Many have gone out of state to places such as Florida that have few regulations on mask wearing and distancing.
There still are persistent indications of the presence of the United Kingdom’s Covid variant, the highly contagious B.1.1.7, which has been identified somewhere in the county.
In a nutshell, school and health officials are worried about the likelihood of another surge, this time involving younger and healthier people.
