3 years of COVID-19 in Michigan: The most striking numbers

Three years ago Friday, on March 10, 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Michigan’s first two confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus: a middle-aged woman from Oakland County who had traveled internationally and a middle-aged man from Wayne County who had traveled domestically.

Eight days later, a Southgate man in his 50s was the first reported death.

The state has been releasing regularly – every day in the first several months of the pandemic, weekly for most of the last year – data on new cases, new deaths, test results, demographics, hospitalizations, vaccinations and other categories since.

Because of lags in data reporting, when the state announces each Tuesday the number of new cases and deaths for the week, that means the state learned of them in the last week. The actual infections and deaths happened weeks earlier. In some cases, the new information is from a case that started or a death that occurred more than a month prior.

The state records information historically based on when the infection or death occurred, not when it was reported. Deaths are recorded on the day the person died, and test results on the day the test was taken. Cases are reported based on the onset of symptoms when that’s available.

Based on the state’s reporting, here are some of the numbers that stand out over the last three years.

170

On April 12, 2020, and again four days later, 170 people died from complications of COVID-19. Over the three years, over 100 people have died on 118 different dates.

March 2, 2020

While we didn’t know about the first death until March 18, 2020, the state later determined the first death happened on March 2.

39

The average number of deaths per day since March 2020.

1,084

From March 18, 2020, through Monday, at least one death has occurred in the state every day, a string of 1,084 days. The latest state report shows no deaths on Tuesday, but the lag in reporting means that will likely change with next week’s data release.

23,784

Jan. 3, 2022, saw the highest number of new cases. This was the first of four days with more than 20,000 new cases, all occurring within an 8-day period.

2,781

While the daily average for cases has hovered under 1,000 for five of the last six weeks, the daily average since the beginning of the pandemic is 2,781.

1,093

The state topped 100 new cases for the first time on March 9, 2020, and has seen at least 100 new cases every day since, a string of 1,093 days through Monday. The report for Tuesday had 82, but that’s likely to increase when data is updated next week.

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139,793

Three days after the state expanded eligibility to anyone age 16 or older, the highest number of COVID-19 vaccines administered in a day came on April 8, 2021.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 3 years of COVID-19 in Michigan: The most striking numbers