As cases have continued to climb, so has the state’s positivity rate. On Monday, Ohio’s daily positivity rate was 18.5%, its highest since the end of April, according to ODH. The seven-day average is 16.1%.
Ohio recorded 464 hospitalizations in the last day. There are 5,198 COVID-19 patients in Ohio hospitals. It’s the ninth time in 10 days that the state’s coronavirus patients count was more than 5,000, according to ODH.
In southwest Ohio, the region’s hospitals have 1,221 coronavirus inpatients. The region has hovered around 1,100 to 1,200 COVID-19 patients for the last two weeks.
Coronavirus patients account for 16.99% of southwest Ohio’s hospital beds, slightly down from nearly 18.5% reported a week ago. The region has 1,946 hospital beds (27.07%) open and 234 (20.24%) ICU beds open. The 271 COVID-19 patients in the area’s ICU account for23.44% of ICU beds, according to ODH. Two hundred and two coronavirus patients in the region are on ventilators.
One in four patients in the state’s hospitals and one in three ICU patients in Ohio have coronavirus, according to the Ohio Hospital Association.
Over the last 21 days, Ohio is recording an average of 356 coronavirus hospitalizations and 37 ICU admissions.
Deaths increased by 84 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 7,187.
On Tuesday the state cleared a backlog of nearly 13,000 antigen tests, resulting in a spike of 25,721 daily cases. Previously the state health department verified COVID-19 positive antigen tests. Though initially ODH was able to keep up with the tests, they fell behind on verifying cases in recent weeks after antigen tests were used more and more.
The decision to no longer do additional verification in antigen tests reflects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention policy.
“After understanding more about antigen tests, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), changed their case definition in August allowing antigen tests to be included in case counts without additional verification,” said ODH Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff. “ODH is now aligned with CDC’s current definition and we will begin reflecting those tests immediately in our daily reported case counts moving forward.”
About the Author