COVID-19 on the rise

I don’t want to beat this dead horse, but case rates are high right now. If you’re unvaccinated, it’s more important than ever that you protect yourself by getting the process started.

Even if you are vaccinated, boosters and masking in public is highly recommended by health experts and authorities.

Let’s take a look at some of the numbers.

These are the last two updates from the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department. Obviously still a solid wall of red, but looking at the numbers tell’s a more nuanced story, too.

Anything over 10% positivity is considered high risk, and Houghton County’s latest statistic shows over 25%, up from 21% last week. Rates are also up in Gogebic and Keweenaw Counties but are trending down in Baraga and Ontonagon Counties.

While a 4% increase in Houghton County may not seem large, looking down the column a little you can spot the case count. Houghton’s has almost doubled in the last week. And now we’re heading into Thanksgiving.

Now let’s look at some of the state’s data.

The state’s COVID-19 Region 8 (that’s the Upper Peninsula), shows there are 70 total adults are in the hospital with COVID-19. There are 63 ICU beds total for adults in the area, and 43 of them are occupied as of Nov. 19. Four of the Region 8 COVID-19 patients are listed as on a ventilator.

Occupancy rates for U.P. hospitals are listed above.

Meanwhile, local schools have seen many COVID-19 cases. Baraga Area Schools reported a new outbreak of 37 cases on Nov. 15. Meanwhile, Hancock Public Schools has an ongoing outbreak of 31 cases in their elementary school (first reported Oct. 27), Lake Linden Hubbell Public Schools has an ongoing outbreak of 21 cases in their high school(first reported Oct. 4), and CLK schools have an outbreak of 29 students in their high school (first reported Oct. 4).

An ongoing outbreak is one that has had additional cases added to it in the last 28 days.

Statewide, we’re seeing a huge spike in cases right now. As high as we’ve seen since the beginning of the pandemic.

Luckily, deaths are not keeping the same pace with infections in this spike, likely owing to the broad use of vaccines.

Think safe, mask in public, get your vaccine. I don’t want to lose any readers.

COVID-19 in the Upper Peninsula, around the nation

I have been reluctant to do more reporting on COVID-19, which might be why I haven’t come up with any decent ideas for new angles that haven’t already been done ad nauseam.

If you feel like you know of a COVID-19 story that hasn’t been told already, please let me know. As much as it drags and grinds on all of us, I do feel that telling as many stories as possible in this moment of history is very important. Every story only happens once.

In the meanwhile, here’s a quick look at local, state, and national numbers.

The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department reports that we have been deep in the “High Transmission Rate” area for weeks now. Here’s their report, but it’s a little hard to break down so I’ll do a little number crunching below, too.

Obviously, red is bad, and there’s a lot of red. That’s pretty easy to interpret. Where all that redness comes from is the Case Rate/100,000 population number. Anything over 100 is considered high, and as you can see, Houghton County is at 308.2. Of course, Houghton County only has a population of around 37,000, so we don’t need 308 cases to get to 308 per 100,000, that’s just the ratio.

A quick comparison to last week’s numbers shows that this isn’t a significant departure from the trend, but the percent positivity has gone down slightly from a week before that.

According to data from michigan.gov, Aspirus Keweenaw reported that they had three COVID-19 patients in their ICU, with 42% bed occupancy. UP Health System - Portage reported three COVID-19 patients, but none in the ICU, and 44% bed occupancy. The state average bed occupancy is currently 83%, with at least two hospitals reporting 100% occupancy.

On Monday, Lake Linden and Calumet both reported new school-based outbreaks of COVID-19 to the state. Lake Linden reported one involving 9 students at the high school and another with 8 students at the elementary. CLK schools reported an outbreak involving 13 students at the high school.

Data from michigan.gov/coronavirus

As you can see from the graphs above, the number of deaths (in red) in Michigan is lagging behind the previous waves, but the fact that we haven’t seen the peak of this fourth wave yet is troubling.

Data from Johns Hopkins University of Medicine shows that all in all, Houghton County and the nearby counties aren’t doing too poorly, with cases seeming to be concentrated in states to the south and west of Michigan so far.

It also shows that we’re the most virulent country on the planet (in part due to our size, the data isn’t population-adjusted, but Russia, China, India, and Canada all have much better 28-day totals than us).