(WWJ) Top health officials are urging for help from the public as they ramp up efforts to address the latest COVID-19 surge in Michigan.
The state's Chief Medical Executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian said with the omicron variant around, more cases are coming.
“It’s coming,” Bagdasarian told WWJ Health Reporter Dr. Deanna Lites on Wednesday. “We are in the early stages.”
This comes as the state health department reports 13,6000 COVID-19 cases per day; the highest daily average since the beginning of the pandemic.
Officials are currently working on programs that will increase the public’s access to testing—a growing problem communities face across the state as demand rises and state labs encounter staffing shortages.
“We are working to procure as many on-site antigen tests and over the counter antigen tests as possible,” Bagdasarian said. “We’ve got the My Back Pack program where we have tests going into backpacks for K-12 children around the state to be used by themselves and their families. We’ve also got tests that will be going out to places like libraries, YMCAs and other community organizations so that we hopefully we can increase access to those over-the-counter tests.”
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The high volume of cases is making it difficult for public health officials to record every positive case of COVID 19. Bagdasarian encourages people who have become symptomatic, or have tested positive for the virus, to reach out to others that may have been exposed.
“We want to empower people to start some of the contact tracing on their own,” Bagdasarian said. “That’s extremely helpful and really the right thing to do to keep community transmission down.”
The rise of Omicron is also affecting local hospitals already strained since the beginning of the pandemic.
“The situations in the hospitals is going to affect us all,” Bagdasarian says. She warns the public that access to emergency, routine and urgent care can be delayed.
So what can you do?
“The best thing we can do now is to use the tools we have — vaccines and boosters, high quality well-fitting masks, and on-going testing. Those are the leys to flattening this curve and suppressing a worsening of the situation that we’re in right now.”
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