(WXYZ) — In the state's fight against COVID-19, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is showing a summer surge in southeast Michigan.
Though most of Michigan appears in green for community levels, it's a different story here in metro Detroit.
According to the CDC's COVID map, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, Wayne and Monroe counties are all in red for COVID community levels. Residents in those areas are encouraged to wear masks indoors while in public and to take additional precautions if you're at high risk for severe illness.
The CDC's website says that the various levels "are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area."
"I think that because BA.5 is more transmissible, we are starting to see some of the early effects of that. And what that means is we are seeing ... we're calling them undulating plateaus where the cases, they may not be clearly rising or rising very quickly, but they are definitely not decreasing right now," said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the chief medical executive for the state of Michigan.
Dr. Bagdasarian said they've been seeing increases in the south and that the northern states, like Michigan, have been a bit slower to follow.
She said the state is also keeping a close eye on hospitalization numbers.
"We're not seeing big increases in COVID patients in the ICU or on ventilators. And so that tells us that some of those mitigation strategies that we have right now in 2022 are really working and preventing people from ending up with severe illness," said Dr. Bagdasarian.
To learn more about COVID community levels, click here.
