Ohio reports nearly 16,000 daily COVID cases, sets record for 3rd straight day

Ohio’s 21-day average increased to 8,966 cases a day Thursday. A week ago, the state was averaged 7,581 cases a day over the previous three weeks.

In the last week Ohio is averaging 11,033 cases a day.

Ohio’s two-week COVID transmission rate climbed back over 1,000 cases per 100,000 people for the first time in months.

The state is averaging 1,009.6 cases per 100,000 people. Cuyahoga County, which has the highest transmission rate in the state, was more than double the statewide average with 2,509.9 cases per 100,000 people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a high transmission rate as more than 100 cases per 100,000 people.

As of Thursday, ODH reported the following transmission rates for local counties:

There were 4,747 coronavirus patients hospitalized in Ohio on Thursday, with 1,208 people in ICUs and 770 on ventilators, according to the state health department.

One in four patients hospitalized in Ohio and one in three ICU patients have COVID, according to the Ohio Hospital Association. The number of COVID patients in the state’s hospitals has decreased 1% in the last week, but has increased 19% of the last three weeks. Coronavirus ICU patients are up 1% in the past week and increased 16% in the last three weeks.

In the last 60 days, the number of COVID patients hospitalized in Ohio increased by 85%, according to OHA. COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU increased 60% during that same time period.

Ohio added 345 hospitalizations and 20 ICU admissions in the last day, according to ODH. The state’s 21-day average is 328 hospitalizations a day and 33 ICU admissions a day.

While reports out of South Africa indicate the highly contagious omicron variant is less likely to result in hospitalizations, ODH Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said it isn’t clear if the variant will impact the U.S. the same way.

“Even if it turns out to be true that it causes proportionately fewer hospitalizations, if you’ve got so much more spread, we’re still going to have great pressure on our hospitals,” Vanderhoff said.

The best way to avoid serious illness from coronavirus is vaccination.

Since Jan. 1, 46,651 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Ohio were not fully vaccinated, according to ODH. More than 2,780 patients hospitalized with the virus were fully vaccinated.

During that same time period 13,992 COVID deaths occurred among patients who weren’t fully vaccinated and 664 deaths occurred among those who were fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

The state health department was not able to update its vaccination dashboard due to an outage with Ohio’s immunization database vendor. The state is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but vaccination reporting is expected to be delayed through Monday.