COLUMBUS – As the U.S. expands COVID-19 boosters to younger teens, Ohio health officials say they are concerned about the continued spread of the disease, due to the delta variant of the coronavirus that causes it.
Ohio is one of a handful of states that account for more than half of the most recent hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and the state’s top health official says the problem seems most acute in northern Ohio, where 62% of the state’s hospital admissions have been reported in the last two weeks.
“The current surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations is simply putting a dangerous strain on the state’s health care infrastructure,” Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health, said in a press briefing Thursday. “We are, yet again, in a serious situation, every but as serious as last December and January.
According to an independent review of hospitalizations in Ohio, 23.7% of patients in intensive-care units were being treated for COVID, the highest number of the pandemic. The Ohio Hospital Association reported Thursday that 4,338 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized, the most reported this year.
Vanderhoff says data collected between April and November, when vaccines were widely available, indicated that the highest rates of new cases occurred in the Ohio counties with the lowest vaccination rates while the counties with high vaccination rates experienced lower rates of infection.
The data showed that the rates of new infections were 35% to 40% in counties that were below the statewide average for vaccinations.
In central Ohio, only Franklin, Delaware and Union counties experienced vaccination rates higher than the statewide average.
In total, 1.2 million residents in central Ohio were fully vaccinated. Across Ohio 6.3 million eligible residents had completed the vaccination process and 1.9 million had received booster doses.
Vaccines OK’ed for 16- and 17-year-olds
The federal government Thursday opened a third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine to people as young as age 16.
The Pfizer vaccine is the only option for children and teenagers.
The Food and Drug Administration cleared an extra dose for those ages 16 and 17 and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rapidly endorsed a booster for those ages.
It’s not clear if younger teens will need one.