Michigan Is In Phase 4 Of Gov. Whitmer's 6 Phase Plan To Reopen The State

The phases of the pandemic include:

1. UNCONTROLLED GROWTH

The increasing number of new cases every day, overwhelming our health systems.

•  If a community remains in this phase for an extended period of time, healthcare facilities could quickly be overwhelmed. Because unmitigated behavior contributes to the exponential growth, communities can slow the growth rate and exit this phase by introducing social distancing practices and wearing masks when in public.

2. PERSISTENT SPREAD

We continue to see high case levels with concern about health system capacity.

• There are still high case levels, but the growth rate might gradually decrease. Within this phase, the epidemic is widespread in a community and source of infection is more difficult to trace. Even though the growth rate of new cases is decreasing, high volumes of infected individuals mean that health systems could become overwhelmed, leading to higher mortality rates. During this phase, it is important to maintain social distancing practices in order to slow the spread to a level that health systems can handle as they are continuing to build capacity.

3. FLATTENING

The epidemic is no longer increasing and the health-system's capacity is sufficient for current needs.

• Because new cases are not constantly increasing, health system capacity has time to expand to epidemic needs and is not typically overwhelmed. During this phase, testing and contact tracing efforts are ramped up statewide. To prevent each infected individual from spreading the virus unchecked, rapid case investigation, contact tracing, and containment practices are necessary within a community.

4. IMPROVING 

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are clearly declining.

• When in the Improving phase, most new outbreaks are quickly identified, traced, and contained due to robust testing infrastructure and rapid contact tracing. Health system capacity can typically handle these new outbreaks, and therefore case fatality rate does not rise above typical levels. Though a community might be in a declining phase, the overall number of infected individuals still indicate the need for distancing to stop transmission and move to the next phase.

5. CONTAINING

Continued case and death rate improvements, with outbreaks quickly contained. 

• At this point, the number of active cases has reached a point where infection from other members of the community is less common. With widespread testing, positivity rates often fall much lower than earlier phases. Rapid case investigation, contact tracing, and containment strategies cause new cases to continue to fall. However, if distancing and other risk mitigation efforts are not continued, infections could begin to grow again because a permanent solution to the epidemic has not yet been identified.

6. POST-PANDEMIC

Community spread not expected to return.

• Reaching this phase would mean that community spread is not expected to return, because of sufficient community immunity and availability of treatment. Because of this, the number of infected individuals falls to nearly zero and the community does not typically experience this strain of the epidemic returning. All areas of the economy reopen, and gatherings of all sizes resume.

"The worst thing we can do is open up in a way that causes a second wave of infections and death, puts health care workers at further risk, and wipes out all the progress we've made. That's why we will continue to monitor the spread of this virus, hospital capacity, testing rates, and more as we work toward reaching the 'improving' phase," Whitmer said.

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