COLUMBUS — It doesn’t look like statewide COVID-19 health restrictions are coming off any time soon.
In fact, numbers around Ohio, and Richland County, remain headed in the wrong direction.
Despite the fact 36 percent of the state’s residents have now received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, numbers of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to rise, according to Gov. Mike DeWine.
The governor, who announced on March 4 that all statewide restrictions, including a mandatory mask mandate in place since July 2020, would be lifted when the number of new COVID-19 cases dipped below 50 per 100,000 residents over a two-week period.
At the time, the number of new cases per 100,000 had slipped to 143.8, showing a steady decline since early January. The numbers have climbed every week since his announcement.
The governor reported on Thursday during a press briefing that the number of new cases statewide in the past two weeks had reached 200 per 100,000 residents and that hospitalizations were the highest in a month. That’s up from 183 a week ago.
The majority of the counties with the highest incidence of cases in Ohio are in the northern region of the state which is seeing a high level of variant cases. Lucas County is currently seeing the highest occurrence of cases with 341.1 cases per 100,000 county residents.
The percentage of residents testing positive for COVID-19 has increased to about 5 percent statewide on a seven-day average, up from around 3 percent in early March.
There were 1,305 Ohio residents hospitalized on Thursday due to COVID-19, according to the Ohio Hospital Association website. That’s up 7 percent in the last week and 37 percent in the last 21 days. The number, which peaked in December, had dropped as low as 839 on March 21.
In terms of vaccination against the virus, the Ohio Dept. of Health website reported Thursday that 4,254,389 residents have received at least one dose and that 24 percent of the state’s residents are now fully vaccinated.
DeWine said Thursday that vaccines provide the best path out of the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of nearly 19,000 Ohio residents since it reached the state in March 2020.
“This vaccine is a ticket to freedom,” he said. “We know how to get out of this. This is not five months ago, four months ago (before vaccines were available,” he said.
“We know how to get out of this and we have the tool to get out of it. We just have to use the tool and we’ve got to use it every day,” DeWine said. “And that is to vaccinate people.”
To date, 12 states that had mask mandates covering the general public have lifted them — nine by order of the governor (Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Texas and Wyoming), two by legislative action (Kansas and Utah) and one by court order (Wisconsin).
Richland County triggered five of the seven indicators in the Ohio Public Health Advisory System, up from four a week ago — new cases per 100,000 residents, sustained increase in new cases, proportion of cases not found in a congregate setting, sustained increase in emergency room visits and sustained increase in outpatient visits.
Richland County reported 265 new cases in the last two weeks, up from a low of 134 reported on March 25. It’s the largest number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the county since Feb. 18 (272), when numbers were on the decline.
The county nearly triggered a sixth indicator — hospital admissions. A county is flagged in this category if it has at least five consecutive days of increase due to COVID-19 in the last three-week period.
Richland County didn’t have five consecutive days of increase during the three weeks, but hospital admissions due to the virus have climbed from 0.29 on a seven-day average on April 6 to 1.57 on April 13.
According to the ODH website, 34,284 Richland County residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or about 28 percent of the population. One in five county residents have been fully vaccinated.
