Michigan may have dodged holiday surge, Kalamazoo did not

There was a noticeable surge in new coronavirus infections around the country in the weeks following Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Arizona, where there is no mask mandate and restrictions are few, is the top of the heap, with an average of 131 new cases per 100,000 people.

It looks like Michigan has avoided most of that. The average of new cases in the state increased slightly in the first full week of 2021, but for the most part new infections have been flat – still high, but not going up or down by very much.

“We dodged anything that was sudden and fierce like we saw in other states,” said University of Michigan epidemiologist Dr. Emily Toth Martin, in an interview with MLive.

Kalamazoo County has not been so lucky.

On December 29, Kalamazoo County was averaging about 56 new cases of COVID-19 per day. By January 8, that number had jumped to 90.

New infections wasn’t the only number that shot up. The average of daily new deaths also increased after the holidays. The county reached a pandemic high of 3.93 deaths per day on January 7.

Both measures have since dropped significantly – to almost 60 new infections and less than one death per day as of Friday.

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