COLUMBUS, Ohio — As daily COVID cases continue on a downward trend, Ohio health officials offered an update on the state’s current situation in battling the pandemic.
“We are feeling hopeful as we begin February that better days are ahead – but remember, we are still a very long way from having case levels like those we were seeing in the late spring through the early fall," Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said during a press conference Friday morning. "Our cases per capita are still, as a state, more than 10 times what is considered high in terms of levels of transmission. As we look forward, there’s no crystal ball to tell us what will be coming next. COVID-19 is almost certainly here to stay, so now the question for us is how do we learn to live with it?"
Where do we stand right now? Cases and hospitalizations are on a continued downward trend -- specifically in Cuyahoga County.
“It didn’t take long for Cuyahoga County to soar to the very top of Ohio’s weekly case rates per 100,000 residents in mid December with more than 1,200 cases per 100,000 residents," Dr. Vanderhoff said. "Within just one week, that number had doubled to more than 2,500 cases per 100,000. It then peaked at over 3,000 cases per 100,000 one week later.”
We streamed Dr. Vanderhoff's entire press conference, which you can watch in the player below:
That number has now plummeted, Dr. Vanderhoff noted, to 268 cases per 100,000. That makes it the lowest case rate per capita out of Ohio's 88 counties.
“As these cases skyrocketed from mid December through much of January, record numbers of people headed to the hospital for testing or treatment, crowding emergency rooms and filling our hospitals," Dr. Vanderhoff said. "Hospitalizations reached a pandemic high of 6,749 patients on Jan. 10. Thankfully, that number has been falling daily ever since. Now at 3,464, which is a 48 percent drop, but still a very high – and very concerning – number.”
Ohio’s 21-day average has declined to 15,953. Most recently, the state reported 5,737 new daily infections on Thursday afternoon.
Dr. Vanderhoff also urged all Ohioans to get vaccinated and boosted to help lower the risk of getting infected and spreading the virus.