The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is enlisting experts and resources at Michigan State University to bolster the state’s fight against COVID, foodborne illnesses and more. With three grants totaling more than $5 million, MSU and health care partners will help build up Michigan’s capacity to respond to the current pandemic and future pathogens. MDHHS created what it calls the Michigan Sequencing Academic Partnership for Public Health Innovation and Response, or MI-SAPPHIRE, with federal funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Completing the leadership team with Victore DiRita and Jack Lipton on the project is Debra Furr-Holden.

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People in more than 60 counties across the state will no longer be asked to wear masks. According to a new announcement from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the decision to mask up or not will reflect weekly coronavirus data to determine what areas are considered high risk, moderate and low risk. Local doctors say it's positive reinforcement from the CDC that after nearly two years of this virus we are starting to adjust to living with the coronavirus like we do with the flu but Flint epidemiologist Dr. Debra Furr-Holden says this isn't a 100 percent goodbye to masks.

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Indefinite virtual learning is coming to an end for Flint students after Flint Community schools announced they will move forward with returning to in person learning. But now the challenge to keep COVID-19 cases out of the buildings will resume. Local doctors say it's gonna be a tough challenge and realistically COVID spread is inevitable with how contagious variants are among kids. “Stay the course, keep their masks on when they're indoors, avoid the large gatherings, get their vaccine,” Dr. Debra Furr-Holden said.

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As we head into Thanksgiving week, Michigan is seeing a significant surge in COVID-19 cases. It's putting a considerable strain on the state’s hospitals. "Michigan’s current COVID-19 surge was predictable,” shares Debra Furr-Holden to NPR's Here an Now. “We didn’t intervene when we saw cases starting to creep up. That was the time to put mask mandates back in place, to really keep pushing for people to get vaccinated, to restrict indoor gatherings and density, requiring kids to wear masks in schools and we didn’t do that.”

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The Michigan Department of Corrections says COVID-19 vaccines are encouraged but not required for inmates or workers. The department’s data show at least 65% percent of inmates are fully vaccinated, but state officials say they are not keeping a tally of vaccinated corrections workers. "The state hasn’t done enough to keep prisoners safe,” shares Dr. Debra Furr-Holden. 

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Blame systems, not individuals. Dr. Debra Furr-Holden talks to The Guardian about the importance of collecting race and ethnicity data in Covid-19 cases and the significance of state and federal interventions. Said Dr. Furr-Holden, “Michigan is the only state that I know of that transparently reported the racial disparities in Covid early on and also closed the gap.”

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“Public health is not about people getting sick. Public health is about preventing people from getting sick in the first place. And for us to do that well, we’ve got to give the vaccine a chance to be prevalent in the community," Dr. Debra Furr-Holden spoke with Michigan Radio about Michigan’s bright red spot on a heat map of the nation has to do with a few factors: re-opening, vaccines and variants. 

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Dr. Debra Furr-Holden shares her thoughts on the Covid-19 surge in Michigan with the New York Times. “What it looks like happened is she (Gov. Whitmer) tried to be fair and meet us in the middle,” said Furr-Holden, who was appointed last year by Whitmer to the state’s Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities. 

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With an increase in infection rates, epidemiologists discuss the root of the cause,"The thing I worry about, what if Michigan is foreshadowing what other states will see at a later point in time?" said Dr. Darline El Reda, adjunct professor of public health at Michigan State University. "That’s a potential hypothesis as well."

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“We are in real risk of throwing away all the gains we have made, and losing another summer,” Dr. Debra Furr-Holden told BuzzFeed News. Michigan, as well as the Upper Midwest and the Northeast, is in the thick of massive COVID-19 outbreaks. Some counties reopened bars, gyms, and restaurants too early, Furr-Holden believes, which in her view should serve as a warning to the rest of the country. 

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