Coronavirus Michigan

Benchmark assessments from last school year suggest student achievement gaps are still wider than would be expected before COVID.

Once the No. 3 cause of death in Michigan, COVID-19 is attributed to 1,400 deaths so far in 2024. That’s half of the number who died in 2023 and a small percentage of those who died in 2020-22.

The state Department of Education reports progress toward achieving its educational strategic plan, including higher graduation rates, but the pandemic widened performance gaps, according to the CDC.

Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency Director Julia Dale told staffers she’s leaving to accept a job with a nonprofit. Appointed in 2021, Dale is the agency’s third director since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attorney General Dana Nessel and legislative Democrats want to cap prices on necessary goods and services during state of emergency declarations. Republicans and business groups have concerns.

Michigan lags the national average for flu shots, with rates falling for the fourth year in a row this flu season

Staring at screens when they most needed the refining fire of in-person interactions, these now late teens to early-20-somethings missed crucial steppingstones to adulthood.

Michigan underreported total cases counts by 6%, the bulk of which came during the deadly omicron wave of 2021 and 2022. The state fixed the problem in October and blames a computer error.

The nation’s health department has distributed 900 million free at-home COVID tests since winter 2021. It restarted the program Thursday.

The state is spending $17 million to expand 22 sites into wellness centers to provide preventive care in an effort to curb racial disparities in health outcomes.

Michigan students are already suffering from pandemic learning losses. High rates of absenteeism make it worse. Rates improved slightly from last year but are still well above 2019.

Gone are the mask requirements and long COVID-19 isolation periods. But school leaders say it’s still important to stay home when sick.

A federal program that provides COVID shots for under- and uninsured Americans and others is ending, just as updated COVID vaccines are being released.

Michigan is one of just four states with ‘moderate’ levels of COVID-19 detected in wastewater, while many states are seeing ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of infection. Case counts in the state are still rising, but more slowly.

Experts have warned that the pandemic’s effect on learning would last for a long time. Now, Michigan scores show third graders are scoring worse on reading than third graders prior to the pandemic.

Moderna and Pfizer are releasing updated vaccines to protect against the KP.2 variant of the omicron COVID-19 virus.

Office of Civil Rights says Michigan Department of Education is "brushing aside" its violation of federal protections for students with disabilities.

COVID appears on a steady increase again, but health officials stopped collecting data as it grew increasingly imprecise.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s memoir is scheduled for release in early July.

New research finds Michigan students have been slower to recover from pandemic learning losses than peers in most other states.