COVID-19 cases increasing as new variants emerge

Don Reid, Coldwater Daily Reporter
·3 min read
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New cases of COVID-19 are increasing.

“As school restarts and temperatures cool, people will be spending more time inside with more opportunities to share communicable diseases,” Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency officer Rebecca Burns told her board last Thursday.

The first U.S. case of the new variant, BA.2.86, was reported from a sample collected on Aug. 3 by a lab at the University of Michigan.

Health Agency officals did not expect to return to mandatory masking unless there is a major outbreak of COVID-19.
Health Agency officals did not expect to return to mandatory masking unless there is a major outbreak of COVID-19.

The adult lived in Washtenaw County and had not traveled outside the country.

Steve Lanius, Hillsdale County commissioner and health board member, wanted to know if Michigan is facing masking again.

Lanius pointed to Morris Brown University in Atlanta, which ordered all students to mask for two weeks.

Steve Lanius
Steve Lanius

Burns told the board, “I don’t think we’re going to go back that way, unless things get really, really bad. I just don’t see that happening again.”

Several lawsuits remain pending in Michigan challenging mandatory masking in schools.

Medical director Dr.  Karen Luparello said, “I hate those kinds of decisions. Those decisions are really hard without good data.”

The reports of positive COVID-19 cases in Michigan are increasing, Luparello said. But those numbers may not be accurate.

“The data is so ridiculous with COVID," she said.

Dr. Karen Luparello
Dr. Karen Luparello

The doctor said some people don’t test. “I’ve known people personally who I’m pretty sure have COVID. They are at work. They should go home.”

Burns said, “If you do come down with COVID, the best thing to do is to isolate away from others to try to keep it from spreading. Then after five days, if you are fever free, you can come out of that isolation.”

There are still resources in Michigan for free testing and vaccination. Information is available on the health agency website.

Rebecca Burns
Rebecca Burns

Home tests are rarely reported to public health unless the person seeks treatment or calls for emergency services.

Last week in Branch County, 911 dispatched emergency medical services to at least five locations in seven days for adults reported positive for COVID-19 with heart and breathing issues.

Through Aug. 22, the seven-day average for each Branch, Hillsdale, and St. Joseph counties was four new cases.

On Aug. 23, there were 205 persons in Michigan hospitalized with COVID-19.

With infections increasing, Luparello said, “Hospitalizations are less than we were in the height of things. Fatalities are less as well ... I think a lot of people are prescribed therapeutics. That’s been helpful .... The new strains are going to be worrisome.”

Coronaviruses continue to mutate into new variants.
Coronaviruses continue to mutate into new variants.

Center for Disease Control reports illness from BA.2.86 spreading across the country, but it does not appear to be any worse than Omicron or other variants. That could change with new variants. 

Burns said, “Vaccines are currently still available at no cost. But we are no longer able to order the COVID vaccine through the federal government. That has ended.”

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Pharmaceutical companies will make a new vaccine available in late September for purchase. 

Because the newer variants dominating U.S. cases are still part of the Omicron family, the vaccines made to target them may still be effective against the new variants, the CDC said, because the vaccine focuses on portions of the virus that remain the same among these different variants.

---Contact Don Reid: dReid@Gannett.com. 

This article originally appeared on Coldwater Daily Reporter: COVID-19 cases increasing as new variants emerges