Michigan’s Early December Virus Spike Mirrored Nationwide

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services issued an order that took effect Nov. 18 closing restaurants and bars to in-person service and placing tighter restrictions on gatherings.

The order closed public and private high schools and colleges to in-person instruction and limited residential gatherings to no more than 10 individuals from no more than two households.

There were 6,218 new COVID-19 cases on Nov. 18 when the restrictions took effect. There were 4,687 new COVID-19 cases on Nov. 25. However, the number of new cases has been increasing dramatically during the first four days of December. There were 6,511 new cases on Dec. 1, and the number increased every day to 9,425 new cases on Dec. 4. That’s according to worldometers.info.

The early December spike in Michigan cases is mirrored in new cases in the U.S. overall. There were 184,198 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. on Dec. 1, and that jumped to 235,272 on Dec. 4. The numbers do not include individuals who may have contracted the disease but were never tested because they had few or no symptoms.

Large day-to-day variations in new cases measured by testing results are not unusual. The state also uses rolling seven-day averages for some measurements.