(WXYZ) — The State of Michigan provided an update on COVID-19 Friday morning, amid rising hospitalizations and the first confirmed case of the omicron variant detected Thursday.
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Elizabeth Hertel, MDHHS Chief Medical Executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, and two doctors from other Michigan hospitals spoke at the update.
They detailed a dire situation in Michigan that comes with below-average vaccination rates, high hospitalization rates and high case rates.
According to Bagdasarian, cases are at an all-time high, and the state is seeing the highest weekly reported cases since the start of the pandemic. There were 569.2 weekly cases per 100,000 people, and cases are higher than this time last year, and expected to rise.
When it comes to hospitalizations, the state said inpatient beds with COVID-19 patients are at an all-time high with 21.5% of beds, and those have been increasing for 20 weeks.
Related: Michigan requesting more ventilators from feds as COVID-19 hospitalizations soar
On top of that, deaths are increasing. According to Bagdasarian, 87 people died each day on average from COVID-19 in the last week.
"The situation in our state is critical right now. Cases are surging, hospitals are full and we have a new variant," Bagdasarian said.
She said that people need to get vaccinated, get boosted, wear a well-fitting mask in indoor public settings and get tested.
As of Wednesday, the state has 1,368,541 cases of COVID-19 total and averaged nearly 7,700 cases per day over a two-day period.
Michigan also has 4,630 people in the hospital with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 and 59 children in the hospital with the virus. There are 996 patients in the ICU and 601 patients on ventilators.
The state is in the midst f its fourth surge and has been averaging thousands of cases per day. The record number of cases was set in November 2020 with nearly 9,800 per day.
On Dec. 3, the state set a record for the number of active cases of COVID-19 with more than 221,000.
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