Western UP sees more COVID cases but low community levels

By ZACHARY MARANO

zmarano@yourdailyglobe.com

HOUGHTON — The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department posted its weekly COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday and each of the five counties in the area still has low COVID-19 community level by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention measurements.

However, the seven-day case count went up again to 41 new cases – 24 in Houghton County, nine in Gogebic and eight in Ontonagon – from 21 new cases last week. The March 13 update itself represented an increase from 10 new cases the previous week.

On the other hand, there were no new COVID-19 cases in Keweenaw for the second consecutive week. No new cases were reported in Baraga either – in fact, one case that was misreported in the county was subtracted from this week’s total case count.

This brings the total cases in the western U.P. since the start of the pandemic to 14,645 and the total deaths to 265. Of these, 4,010 cases and 41 deaths occurred after the health department made its last update of the year in 2021 on Dec. 30, 2021.

Since there were no new cases in Baraga or Keweenaw counties, their case rates per 100,000 population were listed as not applicable on the update. The case rates were 127 per 100,000 population in Ontonagon County, 65.5 in Houghton and 56.9 in Gogebic, for a total case rate of 57.4 across the western U.P.

The health department reported that the overall vaccine statistics by county were 51.6% in Baraga, 59.6% in Gogebic, 56.4% in Houghton, 63.7% in Keweenaw and 67.1% in Ontonagon, or 57.6% of people in the five counties have received the initial dose of the vaccine. According to the Michigan First-Dose Tracker on michigan.gov, 66.8% of the total Michigan population have received one or more dose.

The Iron County Public Health Department in Wisconsin has not posted a COVID-19 update since March 30. In their last update, the health department reported a total of 1,466 cases in the county. According to the CDC, Iron County’s COVID-19 community level was low as of April 14.

As of March 30, 66.3% of the total population of Iron County received at least one dose of the vaccine, 63.2% completed their series and 36.5% received a booster dose. The Wisconsin COVID-19 vaccine tracker says that 72.1% of people in Wisconsin have been vaccinated with at least one dose and 65.7% of people have been fully vaccinated as April 7.