Highland County has seen a significant increase in Covid-19 compared to a couple of weeks ago and is still higher than the lulls of summer 2023, according to The New York Times Covid-19 Tracker.
Last updated on Monday, but showing statistics from a couple of weeks ago, the tracker said that the county was averaging four COVID-19 hospital admissions per day on March 2. It said this was a 159-percent increase compared to 14 days earlier when the rate was at one per day.
That increase comes after a significant fall-to-winter increase in the virus where cases went from around two cases per day in early September to a high of 13 cases per day in mid-December. Following this spike, Highland County’s case decreased week-to-week until two weeks ago when the case rate was at its lowest since late August. That decrease, however, was followed by the 159 percent increase reported on Monday.
“Data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitalization data is a daily average of Covid-19 patients in hospital service areas that intersect with Highland County, an area which may be larger than Highland County itself,” the tracker said. “The number of daily hospital admissions shows how many patients tested positive for Covid in hospitals and is one of the most reliably reported indicators of Covid’s impact on a community.”
The tracker said that 39 percent of the total Highland County population has received the “primary series” of vaccinations, with 72 percent of the population ages 65 and above having received it. It said that 8 percent of the population has received the “Bivalent” booster, with 26 percent of the population ages 65 and up having received it.
The tracker said that the updated vaccine is still recommended for adults and most children.
For Ohio, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that the daily average COVID-19 hospital admission rate was down to 85 on March 2, 2024. It said that was a 13-percent decrease from 14 days prior.
The tracker said that weekly deaths have continued to trail off significantly in Ohio, as for the week of Feb. 25 to March 2 there were 31 new deaths. The tracker said that the percentage of deaths due to Covid-19 has continued to fall as well. It said that for the four-week period of Feb. 11 to March 9, the percentage of deaths was 1.9 percent, which is still up from the summer numbers of less than 1 percent.
Statistics from the CDC, updated Monday, said that the test positivity rate in Ohio has seen a decrease through March 9, with it now at 5 percent from last week and a test volume at 18,739 people from “COVID-19 nucleic antigen amplification tests.”
In the U.S. as a whole, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that the country is also seeing a decline from the highs of January 2024 in daily Covid-19 hospital admissions. The tracker said that on March 2, the country saw 4,255 hospital admissions, with that an 11-percent decrease from two weeks ago.
The tracker also said that all four metrics for the U.S. were on the relative decline. The metric falling the most evidently, according to the tracker, is the weekly death count, which it said has fallen to 890 deaths for the week of Feb. 25 to March 2.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
