The nation’s top five metro areas in recent cases per capita are all in Michigan: Jackson, Detroit, Flint, Lansing and Monroe. “It is absolutely alarming,” Emily Toth Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said this week. But if any place offers a glimpse at the threat of a new surge, it is Michigan. Health officials partly attributed the rapid rise in cases to the B.1.1.7 variant that was originally identified in Britain and is widespread in Michigan. On Monday, the health system announced it would reinstate a policy limiting visitors at several hospitals, in response to the latest surge.
