Michigan is just under 30K COVID-19 cases, tops 2K deaths

The state hit another morbid milestone Thursday, as the COVID-19 death toll passed 2,000.

Michigan now has 2,093 people who have died of COVID-19 after 172 new deaths were reported since Thursday. On Wednesday, there were 1,921 cases. The state reports a case fatality rate of 7%.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) had a note on 65 additional deaths included in data released Thursday. DHHS said that starting Friday, staff has been reviewing death certificate data maintained in the state’s Vital Records reporting systems on a weekly basis.

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Records that identify COVID-19 infection as a contributing factor to death are compared against all laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Michigan Disease Surveillance System (DSS). If a death certificate is matched to a confirmed COVID-19 case and that record in the DSS does not indicate a death, the DSS record is updated to indicate the death and the appropriate local health department is notified.

These matched deaths are then included with mortality information part of the report. On Friday, this process added 30 deaths. As a result of this week’s assessment, Thursday’s data includes 65 additional deaths identified through this methodology.

There are 29,263 positive cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by a new coronavirus, as of 3 p.m. Thursday, although state officials believe the actual number of cases is much higher. That’s 1,204 new cases reported since Wednesday, when Michigan had 28,059 cases. 

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The state reports 433 people have recovered from COVID-19, as of Friday.

The new state-reported numbers now incorporate data from other commercial and private labs and hospitals around Michigan. The first two cases of COVID-19 were reported in the state on March 10. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency that day.

Johns Hopkins University reports that there are more than 2.1 million confirmed cases worldwide and more than 140,000 deaths. In the United States, there are almost 650,000 confirmed cases and 31,000 deaths.