The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that Michigan and other states with high rates of coronavirus transmission should restrict indoor youth sports and consider other steps now, such as a potential pause on indoor dining, to rein in the spread of the virus.
“I would advocate for sort of stronger mitigation strategies … to sort of decrease the community activity and shore up mask wearing,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 Response Team news briefing.
“I encourage communities to consider adjustments to meet their unique needs and circumstances. For example, in areas of substantial or high community transmission, CDC guidance specifically suggests refraining from youth sports that are not outside and cannot be conducted at least 6 feet apart.
“Our guidance on youth sports is actually … pretty articulate with regard to having substantial or high transmission and that these activities should be happening outdoors and more than 6 feet apart. … Testing should happen at least twice a week if these are high-risk sports. So we’re pretty … clear on that guidance.”
Walensky’s comments came one day after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she’s not willing to address Michigan’s nation-leading COVID-19 case rate of 452.5 cases per 100,000 people with new COVID-19 restrictions.
“The problem is (pandemic) fatigue, mobility and variants,” Whitmer said Tuesday at Ford Field, where she got her first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. “And we’ve got all of those things working against us here in Michigan right now.
“It’s not a policy problem. It sounds like, you know, maybe we could do a little tweaking around the edges, but taking steps back isn’t going to fix the issue. What we have to do is really put our foot down on the pedal on vaccines, and implore people to do what we know keeps us safe: masking, distancing, hand washing.”
Vaccines, however, aren’t an immediate fix to the state’s current surge. It takes at least five weeks for a person who gets the Pfizer vaccine to be fully protected and six weeks for people who get the Moderna vaccine. For Johnson & Johnson’s single dose shot, the best protection comes after 28 days, clinical trials show.
Walensky said the CDC has sent teams to Michigan to help state health officials manage the third major coronavirus surge in the state, which has hospital leaders concerned that they will soon be overwhelmed once again with COVID-19 patients.
“We are working closely with the state of Michigan and state health officials there,” Walensky said. “We have CDC teams on the ground working to assess outbreaks in correctional facilities. We’re working to facilitate increased testing that is happening on the ground in the context of youth sports. We’re doing more surveillance and sequencing so we can understand what is happening with B.1.1.7 and (other) variants.”
The B.1.1.7 strain, which originated in the United Kingdom, is 50{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42} to 100{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42} more contagious than previous strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and is now dominant in the U.S., Walensky said.
“Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States,” she said. “Testing remains an important strategy to rapidly identify and isolate infectious individuals, including those with variants of concern.”
Michigan now has the most inpatient beds occupied by coronavirus patients nationally, and the highest adult intensive care unit beds occupied by coronavirus patients nationally, said Sarah Lyon-Callo, the state’s epidemiologist.
COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide are continuing to increase.
“This week, it was up 45{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42} from the previous week,” Lyon-Callo said. The absolute increase over the past week has been about 1,000 patients, which is the highest absolute weekly change since the spring of 2020 surge.
“Hospitalizations, are doubling every 12 to 14 days now for the last three weeks.”
Half of the people hospitalized in Michigan now with COVID-19 are under the age of 60, said Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical executive. And as of Tuesday, there were 3,127 patients hospitalized with coronavirus statewide.
Beaumont Health is managing more than 700 hospitalized patients, the biggest COVID-19 patient load in the state, CEO John Fox told the Free Press on Wednesday.
“The real question is if this curve continues, and we start to surpass what we did in our second surge and approach the first surge, that would be extremely difficult,” Fox said. “And that’s not a Beaumont issue, that’s really across the entire health care system in Michigan.”
If the volume of COVID-19 patients grows by another 30{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42}, Fox said, it’ll be too much to maintain care for coronavirus patients and all the other people who need medical help for other conditions.
“There’s no way to continue some of the other services and absorb that kind of growth,” he said.
State leaders need to “start looking at every tool in the toolbox to deal with this,” Fox said.
“Community spread is driving this surge, and that spread is turbocharged … with this new variant,” he said. “Our reality is the U.K. variant is dominating the infection rate in Michigan.”
Khaldun said the percentage of positive coronavirus tests has sharply risen in recent weeks, and now is at 15.6{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42}, up 38{066dbc63777e5ed549f406789d72fdeebd77a32711d57f7b38ff2b35c4ba2a42} from the previous week, and the state is tracking 991 outbreaks in counties across the state, with the highest number — 301 new and ongoing outbreaks — traced to K-12 schools.
“These trends are pointing to two clear truths: One, the virus still has hold on us, infecting people and putting them in harm’s way and we need to remain vigilant,” Walensky said. “And two, we need to continue to accelerate our mitigation efforts and to take the individual responsibility to get vaccinated when we can. We have to recognize the high risk of infection in areas of high community transmission.”
Elizabeth Hertel, director of the state health department, said Wednesday that Michigan implemented a new youth COVID-19 testing protocol for athletes ages 13-19 to try to catch cases before they spread within athletic teams, and that winter indoor sports are largely wrapping up this week.
“We have implemented the weekly testing protocol for all sports, high school-age sports,” Hertel said.
“As of this week, I believe, indoor sports for the most part will be completed and we will be moving to spring, those outdoor sports that are less contact,” Hertel said.
“As people have been traveling in March and April for spring break, we are encouraging our school districts and our local health departments to consider moving middle school and high school back to virtual for one or two weeks following those breaks to try to continue to slow the spread of the variant among this age group.
“We’re also in contact often with the hospitals on any resources and support they may need. They are beginning to look at implementing some of their surge plans again. We know that our hospitals are well-equipped to handle these surges; we’ve seen them do it a number of times now, unfortunately. And we will remain here, ready to support them in whatever they need.”
In an appearance Tuesday night on CNN, Whitmer was asked whether the state should again suspend youth sports until the current COVID-19 surge is under control.
“We did suspend sports for a quite a while, and, of course, there was a heavy effort to come to our state Capitol to protest that,” Whitmer said.
“We thought with these additional precautions — in terms of increased testing, increased ability to have these safety protocols, decreased numbers of people that can attend these events — that we would be able to do this safely. But we are seeing the spread continuing in teenage sports. And frankly it’s something that we’re very concerned about. And that’s why we’re doing even more testing and possibly going further than we have.”
She later said: “This may be one area that we need to do more in.”
Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, said Wednesday that other federal resources are being offered up to Michigan help quell the surge, including efforts to get more vaccines to pockets of the state where outbreaks are especially intense.
“We have, within the state, the ability to move vaccine around, of course,” Slavitt said. “But we are in close contact, both through the CDC and direct conversations with the governor and her team, around what are the resources that could be most helpful at this point in time, as we do with other governors that find themselves in this situation.
“Nothing is off the table in those conversations in terms of the kind of support that we can provide and we will keep the options open as we stay close.”
Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.