Michigan was warned about British COVID-19 variant, but many ignored it
Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press, and Mohar Chatterjee, Derek Kravitz and Bianca Fortis, Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
Local health departments across Michigan started sounding the alarm months ago.
A deadlier coronavirus variant that had first ravaged Britain was now here in metro Detroit, at the University of Michigan, a state prison in Ionia and rural counties in the Thumb region with doctors, nurses and public health officials fully aware.
And yet Michiganders from state prison employees to small business owners and local officials to parents of high school athletes ignored medical experts repeated warnings about the highly infectious variant. They rebuffed stay-in-place recommendations, allowed crowded events to occur and turned a blind eye to defiant behavior, according to thousands of internal health department emails and contact tracing notes f
The U.S. Attorney’s office in west Michigan has announced sentences in a drug case that spanned several counties, including Berrien and Van Buren. U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge says 40-year-old Jesus Cortez of Lansing has been sentenced to more than eleven years in prison for his role in a nine-person drug trafficking conspiracy. Authorities say the operation involved current and former inmates of the Michigan Department of Corrections obtaining meth and heroin from Mexico and distributing the drugs in west Michigan and elsewhere. The conspiracy also included smuggling drugs into prisons. Eight of nine defendants are doing time following guilty pleas, while the ninth died before sentencing. Among those convicted is Umberto Gavier Cruz of Covert, who is serving 66 months, and 32-year-old Sarah Joy McBride of Allegan, who has been sentenced to 32 months.
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Michigan was warned about British COVID-19 variant, but many ignored it
Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press, and Mohar Chatterjee, Derek Kravitz and Bianca Fortis, Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
Local health departments across Michigan started sounding the alarm months ago.
A deadlier coronavirus variant that had first ravaged Britain was now here in metro Detroit, at the University of Michigan, a state prison in Ionia and rural counties in the Thumb region with doctors, nurses and public health officials fully aware.
And yet Michiganders from state prison employees to small business owners and local officials to parents of high school athletes ignored medical experts repeated warnings about the highly infectious variant. They rebuffed stay-in-place recommendations, allowed crowded events to occur and turned a blind eye to defiant behavior, according to
The Daily Telegram
JACKSON A Morenci man who was sentenced to prison earlier this year died last week in a correctional facility in Jackson.
Donovan James-Bovee Cool s death on April 10 is considered to be from COVID-19, though his death is under investigation and that determination could change following an autopsy, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said in an email.
Cool was at the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center. That is the facility where male prisoners are first sent before they are transferred to another facility.
Cool had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and was found unresponsive in his cell, Gautz said