Michigan Coronavirus Thursday Update: 888 New Cases, 85 Deaths

MICHIGAN — A day after state health department officials announced more than 900 new cases of the coronavirus had been reported around the state, the number of cases dropped, but the number of COVID-19 related deaths jumped significantly from recent days.

Officials said Thursday that 85 people had died from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours around Michigan. The new deaths were announced along with 888 new confirmed cases, which pushed the state’s total to 578,091 since the pandemic began 11 months ago.

Of the 85 new deaths, 72 were identified by the Michigan Health and Human Services’ regular review of death records, officials said. Over the past two days, a total of 30 people had died due to the coronavirus, including 19 on Tuesday.

Wayne County registered the highest number of cases in the state with 130 new cases and 19 additional deaths over the past 24 hours, data shows. Oakland County was the only other Michigan county with more than 100 new positive cases with 112. Lapeer County represented the state’s fewest new cases by county with 17 over the previous 24 hours.

A total of 15,273 people have died in Michigan from the virus, health officials said. In addition to the confirmed cases and deaths, state health officials announced that there were an additional 55,882 probable cases and 978 additional probable deaths since the start of the pandemic.

As of Wednesday, the state’s positivity rate sat at 2.9 percent as the number of confirmed cases and deaths have continued to drop in recent weeks. Last week, the state’s 6,576 cases and 256 deaths were the lowest weekly total that state health officials had reported in more than four months.