HOUGHTON — Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said the task force is concerned about two Midwest counties that appear to be seeing a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases, Cook County, Illinois, and Wayne County, Michigan.

During a Thursday White House briefing, Birx said that the task force is not looking at where cases are today, but where they will be in the future, so that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can be alerted to where the next hot spots will be, the Associated Press (AP) reported last Thursday.

Birx said that both counties are in urban areas, or in communities that serve an urban area. Chicago is the seat of Cook County, which is one of the most populous counties in the United States. Wayne County is outside Detroit. As of 8:31 p.m. on Mar. 29, WJRT News in Flint reported Detroit has the largest number of positive cases in the state with a total 1,542.

The Detroit Free Press reported Sunday that the official coronavirus case count is currently doubling about every three days in Michigan. At this rate, the Mar. 29 article calculated, Michigan could reach 10,000 cases on Wednesday, and surpass 25,000 on Sunday, if the growth rate does not slow, and the state is able to test enough people accurately to assess the caseload.

All indications suggest Detroit is a new hot spot for a fast-spreading coronavirus that was first reported in December in China and spread like wildfire around the world, the article stated. The United States now has more confirmed cases than anywhere else globally — more than 120,000 — and more than 2,000 deaths. Michigan ranks fifth in nation for the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

On Monday, the Daily Mining Gazette published an article titled Some People are ignoring shelter-in-place orders. The western Upper Peninsula is not unique in its caution regarding reports of people from the Lower Peninsula coming to the area to escape the coronavirus situation in the more densely populated areas.

On March 27, the Detroit Free Press published a similar story titled “Up North Michigan residents to everyone else: Please don’t come here,” in which Traverse City Mayor Jim Carruthers said he understands many people want to come to tourist towns like Traverse City, because “they think they’re getting away from this.” He added that Traverse City residents, however, do not know whether they, and snowbirds wanting to return to northern Michigan, have contracted the disease themselves.

“We’re not encouraging people to leave downstate and come North to their cottages just because they’re off work and they have time to come up and vacation up here,” the article quotes Carruthers as saying.

The same article reports Petoskey’s Mayor John Murphy, shares Carruthers’ sentiments.

“We kindly ask that seasonal residents returning to our community do the right thing and self-quarantine for at least 14 days,” Murphy said in a news release Thursday. “We are at a critical juncture in our fight against the coronavirus and will need the full cooperation of our seasonal residents on this. I’m confident that if everyone can abide by the requirements of social distancing and self-quarantine, we will get through this crisis. We are all in this together.”

On Thursday, the village president of Elk Rapids, near Traverse City, also asked part-time residents to stay away.

“Each year we anticipate the return of our snowbirds with great appreciation, whether they are returning from down-state or out-of-state,” James Janisse said in a news release. “It is with mixed feelings and heavy heart, therefore, that I strongly encourage people to stay where they are. Our demographics are such that we have a very vulnerable population currently residing here.”

Bridge Michigan reported on March 19 that Saint Ignace Mayor Connie Litzner said, in response to talk of closing the Mackinac Bridge, she believes slowing travel on the bridge is a good idea, but at the same time, residents in St. Ignace need the bridge to get to their doctors or to work. In the same article, James Lake, a spokesman for the Mackinac Bridge Authority, said a few discussions were sparked among staff after some residents asked if the bridge would shut down, but nothing grew from them.

Closing the bridge would bring many critical industries on both sides to a halt, such as transporting food, propane, lumber and other bulk items. According to Michigan Department of Transportation spokesman Jeff Cranston, it’s common for people to come down to Petoskey for doctors’ appointments. Others rely on the bridge to access healthcare in both peninsulas.