MICHIGAN, USA — While we're seeing lower case counts and positivity rates in West Michigan, cases of the newest COVID-19 variant, as well as more influenza cases, have been detected in Kent and Ottawa counties.
The subvariant of omicron is known as BA.2, and there have been at least 10 cases reported this month in West Michigan. Local doctors are hopeful that this doesn't mean another surge.
"Our hospitals remain quite busy, but thankfully not with nearly as much COVID," says Spectrum Health West Michigan President Dr. Darryl Elmouchi.
Right now, there are more than 50 COVID-19 patients being taken care of at Spectrum Health hospitals. During the latest surge in the winter, their peak was more than 500 cases.
"The last six months, particularly in Michigan and West Michigan, (it was) probably the worst surge in the country because of the duration of it," he says. "Most surges were short-lived."
Now, Dr. Elmouchi says they're waiting to see how the BA.2 variant affects our community. He says while it's more contagious than the original omicron variant, it seems to be less severe.
"What we're hoping for and what's being seen in some countries is more or less a decoupling or a separation in the number of people who get it and the number of people who get sick enough to need the hospital," he says.
"Oftentimes that's a precursor or prediction of what were going to see here in the states," says Brian Hartl, epidemiologist with the Kent County Health Department.
The Kent County Health Department has detected six cases of the BA.2 variant in the last few weeks. Both the local and state health department have seen a slight uptick in flu cases, something hardly seen this year.
"That little bit of a rise were seeing now is likely due to the fact that the flu is still out there and people are kind of reducing their precautionary measures," Hartl says. "The masks have come off, and people are not wearing them as much."
857 patient visits were because of the flu, out of 73,297 outpatient visits in Michigan during the week of March 11. That's 1.2%, up from 0.9% percent the week before. This time last year, only 0.4% of outpatient visits were because of the flu.
"Pre-COVID, we saw a lot of very high spikes of flu for several years," says Dr. Jerry Evans, Mercy Health Muskegon's Chief of Staff. "This year, even if it goes up a little bit, it's going to be far less than we've seen in the past."
He says they've mostly seen mild cases of the flu, particularly in kids. At Spectrum Health, officials are extending screening protocols through April 15 because of the increase in flu activity. Normally, that concludes at the end of March.
Dr. Evans says now is the time to protect yourself both against the flu and COVID-19.
"This is not the time to ignore it," he says. "This is the time to get vaccinated and get your defenses up if that surge does come."
In Ottawa County, four cases were detected between March 6 and 12.
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