Michigan was making good progress at controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and getting people vaccinated this year when, as a public heath expert put it, the state began to "lift the brakes."
Now, the number of Covid-19 cases is spiking and hospitalization rates have been rising, and on Sunday the state reported that its pandemic testing positivity rate had hit 15.64 percent, the highest single-day percentage since Dec. 2.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has acknowledged that the worsening numbers do not look good.
"It's a stark reminder that this virus is still very real," Whitmer, a Democrat, said last week. "It can come roaring back if we drop our guard."
But as more and more Michigan residents are vaccinated — especially the most vulnerable senior citizens — Whitmer has made no move to reimpose Covid-19 restrictions on residents who are already feeling what public health expert Marianne Udow-Phillips called "pandemic fatigue."
Whitmer, whose team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, needs no reminding that some of the fiercest resistance to statewide lockdowns was in Michigan — she wound up being the target of what authorities said was a right-wing kidnapping plot.
Besides Michigan, Covid-19 case numbers have been rising sharply in states like Hawaii, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut, prompting the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to warn of "impending doom" if Americans fail to continue taking safety precautions.
Michigan's hot spot for new cases has been the conservative counties north of Detroit, an area known as the Thumb, a bastion of Trump voters that has been especially resistant to pandemic restrictions and mask mandates.
But now the number of cases is starting to climb statewide, and so are the ages of the newest victims, said Josh Petrie, a research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
"While new cases have tended younger in this month's increase, cases are now rapidly increasing in all age groups under 60," Petrie said. "Similarly, while some of the largest case counts per population have been in counties in the Thumb region this month, we are seeing increases in cases around the state."
What's behind the trend?
"For the state as a whole, we are seeing increases in travel and nonessential trips outside the home that are approaching pre-pandemic levels," Petrie said. "Certainly, less mask-wearing and social distancing is going to increase risk of transmission."
Udow-Phillips, who heads the Center for Health Research Transformation at the University of Michigan, said: "It's hard to pinpoint any one thing. Yes, we are seeing the more infectious variants. But we're also doing more testing."