COLUMBUS, Ohio — With COVID-19 cases continuing to spike, Governor Mike DeWine will speak directly to Ohioans in a statewide address to be delivered Wednesday evening.
The address will be given at 5:30 p.m. You can watch it live on 3News and stream at WKYC.com, the WKYC app, Facebook Live, and YouTube. Because of Wednesday's address, DeWine did not hold a Tuesday COVID-19 briefing.
DeWine's message to the state will come amid record-setting coronavirus numbers in Ohio. On Tuesday, the number of daily cases topped 6,500 in the state. Ohio's 21-day average for daily COVID-19 cases is up to 3,398 with a positivity rate of about 10 percent.
Last week, DeWine spoke with 3News anchor and managing editor Russ Mitchell about the ongoing pandemic in Ohio and what steps he may look to take as cases surge.
“We’re thinking somehow, frankly, how to impact people in their private lives. That is not something that government does very well, and that’s not something that government should do very well. What we’re trying to do is, frankly, to get people to understand the gravity of what we’re seeing here," the governor told Mitchell.
On Monday, DeWine brought together several state health leaders, including his incoming Ohio Department of Health Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, for a briefing with the media. The message was that coronavirus cases are continuing to spike at an alarming rate.
"We are seeing an unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases in Ohio," Vanderhoff stated. "Today, we are better prepared with PPE and physical capacity, but what we're seeing now is an increasing demand on our staffing."
Dr. Robert Wyllie of Cleveland Clinic pointed out during the panel discussion that 300 medical workers within the Clinic's hospital family are currently out due to either exposure or contraction of the virus.
“In the intensive care unit we're using about 13 or 14% of the beds, and with again total ICU use of about 70 to 75%. But what we're seeing is we're getting a lot of our caregivers who are coming down with COVID. We have over 300 out at the Cleveland Clinic alone to - so everyone's having staffing challenges. And it's not because they are catching covid in a hospital, what we're seeing is they're catching it in the community,” said Dr. Wyllie.
You can watch Monday's briefing in the player below
