COLUMBUS — Ohio is still nowhere near the COVID-19 new case threshold Gov. Mike DeWine has said in the past is necessary to lift all state health orders, though it dipped Thursday for the first time in a month.
Ohio on Thursday reported 185.8 new cases per 100,000 residents during the last two weeks, down slightly from the 200 reported a week ago.
ODH reported Thursday that Richland County had 219 new cases in the last two weeks, or 180.7 per 100,000 residents. That’s down from 265 new cases last week, or 218.7 per 100,000.
It’s the first local drop in terms of cases since numbers began trending up three weeks ago. Richland County registered a low of 134 new cases on March 25, 110 per 100,000 residents, before numbers again began to climb.
Richland County remained “red,” or level three, in the Ohio Public Health Advisory System. The county triggered four of the system’s seven indicators, down from five it recorded a week ago, though hospital admissions and and outpatient visits related to COVID declined.
DeWine said March 4, when COVID-19 numbers were declining, that he would lift health restrictions, including a statewide mask mandate, when the number of new cases in a two-week period dropped to 50 per 100,000 residents.
The slight dip in the number, reported each Thursday, came one day after DeWine said he may change the health restriction measuring stick to the number of Ohioans vaccinated, rather than based on the number of new cases.
A dozen states have lifted statewide mask mandates. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said last week he will lift health orders when 2.5 million of the state’s nearly 4.5 million residents get vaccinated, about 55 percent of the population.
“We are actually looking at that,” DeWine said. “We don’t have anything to announce. But we are looking at that. We are looking at any kind of measures that tell people where we’re going and what we have to do to achieve it. We’re not ruling that out at all. We saw what Gov. Beshear did.”
As of Thursday, the Ohio Dept. of Health reported 4,487,779 of the state’s residents (38.39 percent) have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine and 3,304,000 (28.27 percent) have completed the vaccine process.
In Richland County, 35,471 residents (29.28 percent) have at least one dose and 28,340 (23.39 percent) are fully vaccinated, according to the ODH website.
For Ohio to meet the vaccination level set in Kentucky, it would mean 6.3 million residents need to get the shots. DeWine didn’t discuss a specific vaccine percentage on Wednesday, but has said vaccines are the fastest way out of the pandemic that hit the state in March 2020.
“These figures are so intertwined and so related,” he said. “If you hit a certain level of vaccines, you’re going to hit that level of 50. That’s what we think. Where that is, I don’t think anyone knows exactly.”
Hospitalizations statewide due to COVID-19 have declined slightly in the past week.
As of Thursday, 1,245 Ohio residents were hospitalized with the virus, down 5 percent in the last seven days. It’s still up 19 percent from three weeks ago. The number of statewide hospitalizations peaked on Dec. 15 at 5,308.
In the hospital region that includes Richland County, there were 216 residents hospitalized on Thursday, down 1 percent in the last week, but up 21 percent from three weeks ago. The regional number also peaked on Dec. 15 at 1,059.
