Encouraging signs but NW Ohio coronavirus deaths still high

Jan. 27—COLUMBUS — While northeast Ohio is experiencing a precipitous decline in coronavirus hospitalizations, the western part of the state has been slower in seeing similar promising signs.

"We're experiencing a mixed bag in northwest Ohio," Dr. Brian Kaminski, ProMedica's vice president of quality and patient safety, said during a media briefing Thursday with Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, state health director.

"We're definitely encouraged by the fact that the burden on our emergency department and our urgent care seems to be reducing right now ...," Dr. Kaminski said. "There is data that still hurts and is still placing stress on our system right now. Just last week we reported our highest number of deaths across the system. In many respects, this is and has been the hardest wave that we have gone through."

Numbers in the southern part of the state also remain stubbornly high.

Statewide, the number of hospitalized patients hit a pandemic record of 6,749 on Jan. 10 and has since dropped to 5,004, Dr. Vanderhoff noted.

But the highly infectious omicron variant remains extremely prevalent — about 1,700 cases per 100,000 state residents. That is 17 times what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider to be high incidence and dramatically higher than the 19 cases per 100,000 seen last July during the state's short-lived, pre-delta reprieve.

"We're cautiously optimistic that we may be on the other side and beginning to head down from this peak as we head into the month of February," Dr. Vanderhoff said. "We've seen omicron emerge fast [and] furious with sharp rises and steep declines in other parts of the world, and that is also what may be what is starting to happen here in Ohio."

As to when people in Lucas County can finally set aside social distancing, surgical masks, and plexiglass shields in daily life in the form of social activities, work, and school, decisions await a certain infection-rate drop. That mark is below 100 new cases per 100,000 county residents over two weeks — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention trouble threshold, Eric Zgodzinski, health commissioner at the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department, said last week.

According to the Ohio Department of Health, Lucas County's infection rate as of Thursday was almost 15 times higher than that — 1,481 per 100,000 — but the number could continue to fall rapidly following a daily peak three weeks ago in new confirmed infections. A week ago, the county infection rate was about 25 times higher than the trouble threshold — 2,498 per 100,000.

"Our numbers are definitely trending down, and — compared to some other counties [of northwest Ohio] — our decrease is greater," Mr. Zgodzinski said Thursday. "If we continue down this path of decrease, my best prediction is that we'll reach the threshold level sometime in March."

The Lucas County infection rate Thursday also was about 6.5 percent lower than the statewide average of 1,582 per 100,000, according to the state statistics updated that day.

Also on Thursday, the county health department announced that coronavirus test sites in the county were closing — "as a result of decreasing testing demand" — after testing nearly 6,200 people since opening Jan. 7. The final days of coronavirus testing at the Lucas County Recreation Center in Maumee and at the UAW Local 12 in Toledo are Thursday and Friday respectively.

After the closure of those sites, individuals in need of coronavirus testing are encouraged to contact their primary care provider or additional testing locations found at https://lucascountyhealth.com/covidtest.

In Ohio, the prevalence of omicron among the population also led the state Department of Health on Wednesday to lift the responsibility of K-12 schools to conduct contact tracing whenever new cases pop up. The state has advised school superintendents that efforts would be better focused on contract tracing by local health departments whenever a cluster of cases pop up.

The state, however, still encourages schools to require the wearing of face masks in the classrooms, even as some schools are moving away from that. And it continues to press for those in schools and elsewhere to get fully vaccinated, followed by a booster, when eligible.

"The omicron variant is substantially different," Dr. Vanderhoff said. "It has really changed the complexion and picture of COVID-19. ... It's become clear that with something that is spreading ubiquitously, something that is literally just about everywhere, the most important steps that we can take are to focus on areas where we are seeing an unusual degree of activity, a cluster of cases ... as well as focusing our efforts on environments where we really work very hard to prevent any degree of transmission — many of our congregate-care living environments."

As elsewhere, ProMedica has seen the unvaccinated disproportionately represented among those hospitalized.

"While [omicron] might be slightly less severe, it is still a deadly disease in a large portion of our population for those people who have risk factors ...," Dr. Kaminski said. "I'd hate to see the scenario that could have played out if we didn't have effective vaccines."

As of Thursday, 59.8 percent of Ohioans age 5 and older who are eligible are considered fully vaccinated. But the rate at which those Ohioans have gotten recommended boosters has been on the decline. Of the nearly 6.6 million in the fully vaccinated group, about 3.2 million have received boosters.

The number of new infections came in at 12,108 statewide, well below the three-week average. New hospitalizations, which can lag new case statistics by weeks, were also down from the day before at 446 before but remained above the average of 376. The state on Thursday did not update the number of deaths, which stands to date at 32,489.

Meanwhile, Dr. Vanderhoff said the state expects an imminent delivery of 400,000 antigen rapid test kits out of more than 1 million ordered. The priority remains distributing those to schools before tests can be made available to the general public via libraries.

Staff writer Mike Sigov contributed to this story.

First Published January 27, 2022, 1:11pm