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County Executive Dave Coulter speaks on COVID-19 efforts in Oakland County

Posted at 6:29 PM, Jan 05, 2021
and last updated 2021-01-05 19:45:14-05

(WXYZ) — Counties all over southeastern Michigan are working to contain the coronavirus while helping people through the pandemic.

In tonight's 7 UpFront report, we're being joined by Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter to talk about the efforts in his county.

You can see the full interview in the video player above.

"We're going to ramp up our capacity to do as many vaccinations as we can," Coulter says. "We're at a critical phase now where we can really get a handle on this virus if we can get people vaccinated."

Coulter says they have converted their drive-thru testing sites over for vaccinations and they will be running 7 days a week.

"Through those drive-thru testing sites, we'll be able to do just short of 18,000 vaccinations a week and we're prepared to do that," he says.

"We're really concerned about [restaurants}," Coulter says. "We've given them now two rounds of funding to our restaurants, and bars in the last round as well, because they're really struggling with the latest health orders from the state, so just at the end of last month we put out another $10 million in grants to our bars and restaurants across Oakland County, and we're hoping that's a bridge that will last them until the federal money, which just recently got approved, can get into their coffers as well."