Governor Gretchen Whitmer held a COVID-19 update Tuesday morning, the first time like this since June.
In that time, Michigan has been hit hard by the Delta variant, and now the Omicron variant is starting to become the dominant strain.
There were no new mandates or restrictions at Tuesday’s update. However, a reminder and reinforcement from the state that Michiganders need to get vaccinated and boosted if and when eligible.
Nearly 90% of all people in the hospital or dying from COVID-19 are not vaccinated.
“I know that we’re seeing people who are vaccinated and boosted test positive for COVID,” said Gov. Whitmer. “I think the goal is, of course, all of our individual goals not to get in the first place but the goal is to stay at the hospital, the goal is to stay alive and our odds of doing both of those are much improved if we are vaccinated and boosted.”
“First we see the infections, then we see the hospitalizations usually about two weeks later, then we see the ICU starts to fill up, then you see the mortality is really no way we’re going to know what the true effect of this variant is until all that get a chance to play out, and with this catchy as it is it’s really just not worth us running the risk with it,” said Dr. Shelley Schmidt, Pulmonary Disease Physician at Spectrum Health.
Governor Whitmer set a goal to get one million additional Michiganders boosted from now until the end of January.
This includes at least 95% of people in nursing homes.
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