COLUMBUS – COVID-19 arrived in Ohio earlier than first thought.
The first confirmed cases were reported in March but state health director Dr. Amy Acton says testing shows there were five cases in five counties back in January.
“We will learn more and more about this disease — how long it was here in Ohio, how long it was spreading – as we do more testing,” Acton told reporters during Gov. Mike DeWine’s televised coronavirus briefing Monday.
The new information was the result of antibody testing, which can detect if someone has had the disease and recovered.
Acton did not say which counties were affected.
She said state investigators will try to determine if the cases were linked to travel.
-0-
The White House is recommending that all nursing home residents and staff be tested for the coronavirus in the next two weeks but Gov. Mike DeWine said Ohio might not meet that deadline.
“We certainly do not have unlimited testing,” he said.
He did say the state is doing more overall testing, increasing the state’s testing capacity to 14,000 tests per day, and he expected the capacity to top 20,000 in the next few weeks.
He said the number of tests performed increased from 4,100 to over 7,200 in the last two weeks.
“I would fully expect those numbers to continue to climb,” DeWine said.
A large percentage of the 1,357 deaths from COVID-19 in Ohio have occurred in nursing homes and prisons.
Records show at least 41 Ohio prison inmates have died of COVID-19, 25 of them housed in Pickaway Correctional Institution in central Ohio, which includes a medical center.
More than 4,300 inmates have tested positive statewide and nearly 500 staff members.
Among the prisoners who died was Carlos Ridley, serving a life sentence for a 1981 triple slaying in Lima.
Ridley hoped to prove his innocence through DNA testing of crime scene evidence. But an appeals court denied his latest question May 4, and he died after being rushed to the hospital the next day.