'If history repeats itself': St. Clair County's next COVID-19 plateau could still be high, health official says

For the second week in a row, there were fewer new cases of COVID-19 reported in St. Clair County than the week before — strengthening hopes the latest wave of the virus has locally hit its peak.

By Friday, there were 16,806 total COVID cases in the county, 343 deaths and 9,284 recoveries, which was up from 15,829, 321, and 9,087, respectively, April 16.

That’s just 977 new cases reported over the previous seven days versus 1,420 and 1,917 new cases the previous two weeks.

However, Dr. Annette Mercatante, the county’s medical health officer, said that spread of the coronavirus could plateau.

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“I think people need to know that as we come down from this surge … if history repeats itself, we're going to end up at a baseline, a new baseline level, that's still quite high,” she said. “So, even though it's reassuring that we're coming down, we need to make sure that we come down to a level that is compatible with everybody's operations, right?

“It's still a problem if the hospitals are super busy, it's still a problem if our staff, if our department staff can’t appropriately follow up on cases.”

At more than 7,100 active COVID cases in the county Friday and with 35.3% of all St. Clair County inpatient beds being used by COVID patients, transmission of the virus and hospitalizations indeed remained high in the area overall.

Mercatante: Case investigators facing 'growing resistance' 

Local officials have previously discussed the difficulty in getting people to cooperate with the health department’s contact-tracing efforts last year as pandemic fatigue first began to set it.

These days, Mercatante said those challenges are coming more often.

“So, before we’d run into it periodically. Now, it's common,” she said. She called what they were experiencing now “a growing resistance” of people “not answering the phone, not giving us the information we need to make sure that people are out there spreading the virus unknowingly, or that they've been exposed unknowingly.”

Mercatante couldn’t put a number on the trend, adding it probably had to come from the state because of the PEG system they use aid in COVID case investigations.

According to an interim April 2021 public health COVID procedural guide, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services contracted with the company Patient Education Genius, or PEG, in response to periods of increased investigation referrals.

Requests for comment on response rates to a state spokesperson weren’t immediately returned as of press time Friday.

Mercatante said the challenge arises with the automation that responds to people who test positive. She said the “response rate for that is abysmal.”

“More and more people are just throwing their hands up and saying, ‘This doesn't work for me,’” she said. “… And the problem is, we really don't have any alternatives for them.”

Ultimately, Mercatante said the trend makes response to the virus harder for everyone — on top of sluggish adherence to basic masking and social-distancing measures.

“The longer people ignore things and deny that we have a problem and deny the solutions that science and medicine give us, the longer we're all going to have to suffer with it,” Mercatante said. “And I don't know the answer (to) that one other than I'm hoping that people come to their senses.

“This does require a community effort. It requires everybody doing their part. I’ve said that a million times. But that’s the challenge I have really with all of it.”

Contact Jackie Smith at jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.