The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ lead epidemiologist gave an update Wednesday on what data experts are looking at more closely as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
The three main areas health experts are watching, mentioned in Monday’s press conference also, are seven-day trends for percent positivity, cases per million people by date of onset, and the percentage of hospital beds filled with covid-19 patients.
Epidemiologist Sarah Lyon-Callo says though these metrics are important to watch, there isn’t a perfect way to measure COVID-19′s overall impact.
“I need to be really clear as an epidemiologist that, there isn’t one single metric that encapsulates everything about how the pandemic is responding to people’s behavior, or how the disease is spreading in the community, and what that spread means in terms of our health care system, our public health system and people’s lives,” she said.
Lyon-Callo also noted that it is still too early to say what impact the Thanksgiving holiday had on overall case data.
