Officials in Detroit are putting together plans to knock on doors across the 139-square-mile city to convince residents to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

Detroit expects by the end of April to have crews start visiting homes to speak with residents about the importance of protecting themselves from the virus with vaccinations and how to sign up to receive the shots, The Detroit News reported.

Despite drive-up vaccinations at a downtown convention center, mass vaccinations at Ford Field and Saturday vaccinations at churches, only 22% of Detroit residents have received at least one vaccine dose compared to 38% for all of Michigan, according to Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services.

Ford Field is a federally selected regional mass vaccination site where 6,000 doses a day will be administered for two months.

Efforts in Detroit, which is about 80% Black, mirror other parts of the country where African Americans have been more hesitant than whites to get vaccinated for the virus.

“We’re going to knock on every residential door in the city, making sure every Detroiter knows how to make an appointment,” Victoria Kovari, an executive assistant to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, told The Detroit News.

The initial outreach is expected to last six to seven weeks. Workers will go to some of the poorer parts of the city two or three times by mid-September.

“The only way that we’re going to beat COVID-19 is to significantly expand our vaccination efforts,” city Chief Public Health Officer Denise Fair said Monday.

About a year ago, Detroit was struggling to bring the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the city down. Mayor Mike Duggan instituted free mass drive-up testing and pleaded with residents to mask-up and social distance. Along with state-wide shut-down orders by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, they have been credited with seeing the numbers drop rapidly until a surge in recent weeks.

Confirmed daily COVID-19 cases in Detroit soared from 37 on Feb. 13 to 425 on March 30. The city reported 172 new daily cases on Tuesday.

Since the start of the pandemic, Detroit has reported more than 37,000 cases and nearly 1,900 deaths.

The seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases Sunday in Michigan — more than double what it was two weeks earlier. Whitmer, a Democratic, has said she does not plan to tighten restrictions. She has blamed the virus surge on pandemic fatigue, which has people moving about more, as well as more contagious variants.

The state reported 7,819 new cases Thursday and 73 deaths. Forty-three of the deaths were from reviews of past records, according to Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services.

Since the pandemic’s start, Michigan has had more than 723,000 confirmed virus cases and 16,400 deaths.

Michigan was No. 1 in the U.S. Wednesday for new COVID-19 cases: More than 46,000, or 469 per 100,000, people in the last seven days, the federal government reported, far ahead of New Jersey at 321.

Justin Dimick, chair of Surgery at the University of Michigan, posted Thursday on Twitter that the school’s hospital again is canceling surgical cases to accommodate the rise in virus admissions.

“Entire state is high-risk,” Dimick Tweeted. “Bars and restaurants are open. People are out and about. No new restrictions.”

Michigan Medicine said Thursday in a statement that it’s going through what other health systems are experiencing with the number of patients arriving at emergency rooms and high admissions.

“Due to rising occupancy and forecasts for continued high demand for emergency care and admissions, Michigan Medicine has had to make the difficult decision to reschedule a small number of scheduled surgeries late this week and next week in order to maintain safe occupancy levels,” it said.