Beaumont Health officials held a news briefing Thursday morning to mark the 2-year anniversary of the first COVID-19 cases reported in Michigan in 2020.
This live stream has ended. You can watch the entire briefing in the video player above.
The briefing was led by Dr. Nicholas Gilpin, the chief medical officer for Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe who has led the healthy system’s infectious disease efforts since the pandemic began, officials said.
The 2-year anniversary comes just as Michigan begins recovering from its fourth wave of the virus. Since the end of 2021, the state -- like much of the nation and the world -- experienced a severe surge in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, at times setting pandemic records for daily case numbers and hospitalizations, partly driven by the omicron variant.
Daily virus cases and hospitalizations have been dropping significantly in the last few weeks after reaching pandemic highs in January. As of Wednesday, Michigan has reported a total of more than 2 million COVID cases and more than 32,000 COVID deaths since the pandemic began.
Michigan’s chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, says that people should prepare for the COVID to come in waves as we move forward in the pandemic -- which health officials say is not over, despite declining virus spread.
Still, many regions, businesses and schools have been reconsidering their pandemic responses as cases drop, lifting some mandates and restrictions.
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