Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
HANCOCK — For the first time this year, the seven-day COVID-19 case count in the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department’s weekly update fell below 100, with less than 100 new cases in Baraga, Gogebic, Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties from Feb. 26 to Wednesday.
There were 13 new COVID-19 cases in Baraga County, 18 new cases in Gogebic, 40 new cases in Houghton, four new cases in Keweenaw and eight new cases in Ontonagon, for a total of 83 new cases in the western U.P.
The update says that the number of cases and case rate dropped by nearly half from last week. In the Feb. 16 update, there were 129 new COVID-19 cases and in the weekly update before that, there were 208 new cases.
Three people died with COVID-19 in this seven-day period, including one person each in Gogebic, Keweenaw and Ontonagon counties. According to the health department, this is the 12th consecutive week that at least three people have died in the five counties.
The transmission rate for the western U.P. remains high by the standards of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC considers a COVID-19 case rate of 100 or more per 100,000 population to be a high risk of transmission and the case rate for the five counties is 119 cases as of Wednesday and each county by itself is above 100 cases.
The western U.P. has lower vaccination rates than the rest of Michigan. The update says that 57% of the population in the five counties has received the initial dose of the vaccine and according to the COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard on michigan.gov, 66% of the total Michigan population have received one or more doses of the vaccine as of Feb. 19.
According to the Iron County COVID-19 update on Thursday, there have been two confirmed and six probable COVID-19 cases in Iron County, Wisconsin, since Feb. 16, for a total of 1,456 cases since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The update says that 66% of the total population in Iron County has received at least one dose of the vaccine and 63% have completed the series. These are less than the cumulative numbers of COVID-19 vaccination for Wisconsin, with 72% of people vaccinated with at least one dose and just under 65% fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to the Wisconsin COVID-19 tracker.
