DETROIT — COVID-19 transmission rates have remained high enough around the entire state that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends all Michiganians wear masks when indoors in public.
As of Monday, every county in Michigan has either "substantial" or "high" levels of transmission, which are the two levels where the CDC recommends people continue to mask up indoors (or outdoors, if social distancing isn't possible) regardless of their vaccination status.
Some counties momentarily dropped into "moderate" transmission for a single day around the Labor Day holiday. In places with "low" or "moderate" transmission, mask-wearing is not considered as critical. But as communities are back to reporting their case numbers full time, transmission ratings have returned to the high levels seen over the past few weeks.
Six weeks ago, Michigan's transmission rates looked nothing like they do now. At the end of July and beginning of August, more than half of the state's 83 counties had low or moderate transmission.
But transmission has increased rapidly thanks to the delta variant, which the CDC says is more than twice as contagious as previous variants.
Doctors across the state have advised people to get vaccinated as a way to bring transmission rates down. That doesn't have an immediate effect, as it can take six weeks for a person to be considered fully vaccinated, but that, combined with mask-wearing, can bring case rates down significantly, Dr. Justin Skrzynski, an internal medicine physician who has been overseeing a COVID floor at Beaumont Royal Oak, told The News last month.
In total, 96.83% of all American counties are at substantial or high transmission rates. In most states, nearly every county is considered high transmission, including several that are exclusively high transmission and have been for weeks. Michigan, in not hitting that, has remained in a small minority.
Multiple studies have shown that for many people vaccines can be the difference between getting sick or not, or how sick a person gets if they do catch COVID-19. A new study released by the CDC last week Friday indicated that people who were not fully vaccinated were five times more likely to get infected with COVID-19, more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus and more than 10 times more likely to die of it than their fully vaccinated counterparts.
In Michigan, 64.9% of people ages 12 and older — which are the ages vaccinations have been approved for — have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In comparison, 59.5% of people are considered fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Michigan ranks 27th among U.S. states in terms of the percentage of the eligible population that is fully vaccinated.
In total, 976,505 people have had COVID-19 in Michigan. There have been 20,535 deaths since March 2020. Infection numbers have been trending upward for 10 weeks.
