DETROIT – It was March 11 last year when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announced that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was canceled because a virus that had already sickened tens of thousands worldwide had reached Michigan. “All those folks standing shoulder to shoulder for hours, it was a recipe for the spread of the problem,” Duggan told reporters at the time.
He said it would be “a matter of days” before a city resident was infected. He was right. COVID-19 hit Detroit hard. But fast action by city leaders early in the pandemic may have slowed the rampant advance of the virus among Detroit's largely Black population.
Detroit recorded 431 confirmed COVID cases on March 30, 2020, and another 387 two days later, according to the city’s Health