COLUMBUS – As the state reported the second straight day of record new COVID-19 cases, Gov. Mike DeWine warned the coronavirus pandemic is getting “worse by the minute” and those who haven’t taken it seriously until now should start taking precautions.
“For my fellow Ohioans who have felt that until now this virus really did not impact their lives or their families and that they would react when the situation got really serious, I say to them that the time is now. Now is the time to take this seriously,” DeWine said at his regular Thursday afternoon coronavirus briefing.
“We need you. We need you to be fully engaged in this battle,” he said.
DeWine called on Ohioans to practice good prevention measures — wear face coverings, avoid large gatherings, maintain social distancing and wash hands — saying those will help bring the rate of spread back down again, but he also said his administration could do little to require residents to follow those recommendations.
“Government is not going to come knocking on your door and making sure that, you know, you’re not having a party. Government can’t be everywhere and is not going to say ‘hey, where’s your mask’,” he said.
He is counting on Ohioans to buy in as they did during previous spikes in April and July.
The number of counties currently listed as having a “very high risk of exposure and spread,” “red” Level 3 on the state’s Public Health Advisory System map (above), increased by nine to 38, the highest number of red counties since the launch of the system in July, DeWine reported.
As of Thursday, 92.8% of Ohioans are living in a county that is either at Level 3, considered to be experiencing a “high incidence” of cases, or both. High incidence is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 population.
An additional 2,425 new cases were reported statewide on Thursday, the highest number in any 24-day reporting period since the start of the pandemic. Of the top 10 days with the most newly reported cases, DeWine says eight have come in the past nine days and nine have occurred in October.
According to local health departments across the state, spread is primarily occurring during social and family gatherings. Many counties are also seeing a sustained increase in hospitalizations, DeWine said.
Ohio saw the third straight day of record-high new cases of COVID-19 on Friday with 2,518, bringing the total number of confirmed and probable cases since the pandemic began to 192,948 with 5,184 deaths. The number of hospitalizations grew by 184 and there were 31,343 active cases, an increase of 1,255 since Thursday.
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Officials at Ohio State say the university’s strategy of frequent testing, isolation, quarantine, masking, distancing and limits on class and gathering size, combined with less density on campus, has reduced infection rates for undergraduate students living on and off campus and kept them low among graduate and professional students. in the testing program, rates have been low, according to a report released Thursday by the university’s Comprehensive Monitoring Team.
Trends in infection rates among asymptomatic students and positive rates among students who seek out testing because of symptoms or close contact with someone who is infected declined and have remained stable since mid-September, the report stated.
The reproduction number, an epidemiological measure of the potential for ongoing transmission, has remained stable, and primarily below 1, an indicator that the epidemic may be slowing, and the positivity rate has remained below 1% since the end of September.
The university has tested over 154,000 students since August 14 and the positivity rate has been 2.24%. The rate among 3,212 employees is 2.24%.