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COVID cases continue rising in Michigan, hospitals urge vaccines
As more cases are being reported every day in Michigan, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 is also starting to increase. That has doctors concerned about what will happen if people still refuse to get vaccinated.
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - After months of a downward trend in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the decline is apparently over as many of Metro Detroit's hospital groups report they're treating more people with the deadly virus.
Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan's Chief Medical Executive, spoke on Monday as cases continued to climb and the news isn't good.
"Unfortunately we are still in the middle of a pandemic. We are seeing our cases, unfortunately, going in the wrong direction," she said.
That's being felt in southeast Michigan where Dr. Dennis Cunningham, the Assistant Medical Director of Infection Prevention at Henry Ford Health Systems, said most of the people they're treating have not been vaccinated.
"Our numbers have seen an increase from last week. Among the five hospital systems, we have approximately 70 patients admitted with COVID right now. The vast majority of them are unvaccinated," Dr. Dennis Cunningham.
That's true at Beaumont Hospital too, where Dr. Christopher Carpenter, the Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine & Infectious Disease Specialist, said unvaccinated people are the majority of people being admitted as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads.
"The delta variant is about as contagious as chickenpox and, as those of us who remember chickenpox, that’s pretty contagious," Dr. Carpenter said.
The concern now is in our children who are under the age of 12 and can't get vaccinated. Ingram County Health Director Linda Vail said as we head back to school, it's important that those eligible get vaccinated.
"Children are being victimized right now by a pandemic that has a simple solution: adult vaccination and, actually, age 12 and older vaccination," Linda Vail/ Ingram County Health Department
Though most people hospitalized with COVID are adults, kids are helping to transmit the virus.
"Kids are getting sicker a little more frequently with this Delta variant. again, the majority of cases are in adults but school is definitely a place where there's going to be transmission," Dr. Cunningham said.
Dr Khuldun says she and Governor Gretchen Whitmer continue to monitor the best way to fight the Covid infection rate in the state but a vaccine mandate is off the table - for now.
"But at this time not looking at vaccine mandate in the state," she said.
For now medical professionals are calling on those who are eligible to get vaccinated but have not to do so right away.
FILE - A Covid-19 vaccine record card is shown in a file image. (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)