COREY WILLIAMS
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.