COLUMBUS, Ohio — Nearly eight months ago, Dr. Amy Acton made a prediction about the spread of COVID-19 in Ohio.
On Tuesday, that prediction came true.
“Not if, but when. We will surge,” Dr. Acton said on March 26 during one of Gov. Mike DeWine’s press conferences. “At our peak surge we may be as high as 6,000 to 8,000 new cases a day.”
Ohio topped 6,000 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday with 6,508 cases reported. That shattered the state’s previous record of 5,549, which was set just a few days earlier on Saturday, Nov. 7.
Her prediction, however, initially indicated those numbers would hit as early as late April, but the state was still under stay-at-home orders at that point. Although the surge came later than anticipated, Ohio's numbers steadily climbed throughout the month of October, continuing into November.
Dr. Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health Director, has stayed out of the public spotlight since resigning from her post in June. She recently broke her silence, however, in an interview with The New Yorker.
“The real battle is that people are suffering,” according to the article by Paige Williams. “We’re seeing the diseases of despair, like depression. Overdoses are up. There’s not a person I meet, from any walk of life, who’s not struggling right now, to make sense of it all, to tolerate ambiguity. Add the election; add the racial unrest.”
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At the time The New Yorker’s article was published on Nov. 2, Dr. Acton also said she believes Joe Biden needed to take swift action to battle coronavirus in the event he would win the election against President Donald Trump.
“We cannot wait two and a half months to start leading a messaging,” she's quoted in the article.
Biden, who has since been declared president-elect, announced his COVID-19 advisory board earlier this week.
Meanwhile, Gov. DeWine has scheduled a 5:30 p.m. press conference Wednesday in which he plans to address the state’s ongoing surge of record-breaking COVID-19 spread.