CLEVELAND — As Ohio topped a 16 percent positivity rate in data released Thursday, Cuyahoga County health officials have revealed the testing results are even higher locally.
“Currently, we’re at nearly 25 percent testing positivity rate throughout our hospitals reporting,” said Jana Rush, Board of Health Director of Epidemiology, during a Friday afternoon press conference with county officials. “This is an all-time high that we’ve observed since the beginning of the pandemic.”
To give some perspective to this data, here’s how Cuyahoga County's positivity rate was broken down for the entire month of November:
- Nov. 22 – 28: A 24.9 percent positivity rate from 38,407 tests.
- Nov. 15 – 21: A 21.4 percent positivity rate from 44,429 tests.
- Nov. 8 – 14: A 20.5 percent positivity rate from 37,318 tests.
- Nov. 1 – 7: A 14.9 percent positivity rate from 28,901 tests.
We streamed the county's full press conference, which you can watch in the player below:
Rush also noted that throughout November, the county averaged nearly 500 cases per day. This week, that average increased to approximately 600 cases per day. By comparison, Rush said Cuyahoga County averaged approximately 100 cases per day throughout the entire month of October.
Hospitalizations have also seen an increase in Cuyahoga County.
“We have observed an 80 percent usage for critical care adult beds,” Rush said. “This is the highest adult ICU utilization that we’ve seen during the entire pandemic, so we’re absolutely increasing in the number of hospitalizations that we are seeing throughout the county.”
This press conference took place one day after Cuyahoga County was put back on the state’s watch list with the potential of reaching “purple” level 4 in Ohio’s color-coded COVID-19 alert system. Although Cuyahoga County has been on the watch list before, it has never been elevated to purple, which is the highest risk level in the state.
Multiple Northeast Ohio counties, however, hit purple status for the first time Thursday. This includes Summit, Portage, Stark, Medina and Richland counties.
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