COVID-19 activity in Michigan follows a seasonal pattern, and winter months consistently bring higher transmission. Based on the most recent provisional data from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, weekly COVID-19 deaths in late November and early December 2025 ranged from 3 to 10 per week, suggesting relatively low but ongoing circulation. A reported jump to 33 deaths in the week ending December 28, 2025, likely reflects year-end reporting delays rather than a sudden surge, as the state notes that most deaths in that window have not yet had their cause of death officially coded.
What the Available Data Shows
Tracking COVID-19 in Michigan has become harder since the federal public health emergency ended in May 2023. The CDC stopped updating county-level community risk data, and Johns Hopkins University discontinued its tracking even earlier, in March 2023. Michigan no longer reports daily case counts the way it did during the pandemic’s peak years.
What remains are two key data sources: provisional death reports from the Michigan Vital Records office and wastewater surveillance run through the University of Michigan and the state health department. Weekly death counts in late 2025 have stayed in the single digits for most weeks, which is consistent with a baseline level of circulation rather than a major wave. For context, during severe surges in earlier years, Michigan recorded hundreds of COVID deaths per week.
How Wastewater Surveillance Works
Wastewater monitoring is now one of the most reliable ways to gauge COVID trends in Michigan, since it doesn’t depend on people getting tested or visiting a doctor. Sampling sites across the state measure the amount of virus shed into sewage systems, then calculate whether viral levels are in growth, decline, or plateau over 7-day and 14-day windows.
The University of Michigan’s wastewater monitoring program calculates trends by comparing rolling averages. If the current 7-day average is higher than the average from a week earlier, the trend is classified as growth. If it’s lower, it’s a decline. This method picks up changes in transmission before hospitalizations or deaths reflect them, often by one to two weeks. You can check the current trend for your region at the UM Wastewater Monitoring dashboard online.
The Winter Pattern
COVID-19 has settled into a roughly predictable seasonal cycle in Michigan. Cases tend to rise in late fall and peak sometime between December and February, driven by the same factors that boost flu and RSV: colder weather pushing people indoors, holiday gatherings, and drier air that helps respiratory viruses spread more efficiently. A second, smaller bump often appears in late summer, typically around August or September.
If you’re checking because people around you seem to be getting sick, that’s consistent with what respiratory virus season looks like in Michigan. COVID, flu, and RSV often circulate simultaneously during winter months, and symptoms overlap enough that testing is the only way to know which one you’re dealing with.
Who Is Most at Risk Right Now
The people most likely to face serious illness from a winter COVID infection are adults over 65, those with chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease, and people with weakened immune systems. Even with lower overall death counts compared to earlier in the pandemic, the virus still poses real risks in these groups.
Uptake of the updated 2024-2025 COVID vaccine has been low nationally, and Michigan is no exception. The state health department and medical partners issued a public call in late October 2025 urging residents to get the updated vaccine before respiratory season intensified. If you haven’t received the most recent formulation, it’s still worth getting, particularly heading into the peak winter months.
How to Check Current Conditions
Since centralized federal dashboards no longer track COVID at the county level, your best options for real-time information in Michigan are the state’s own respiratory disease reports page on michigan.gov, which covers COVID alongside flu and RSV, and the University of Michigan wastewater dashboard, which shows trend direction for monitoring sites across the state. These tools won’t give you a single “high” or “low” risk label the way the CDC’s community levels once did, but they’ll show you whether viral activity in your area is climbing, falling, or holding steady.