Highland County has seen the number of COVID-19 cases fall significantly recently, but they are still up compared to around a month ago, according to The New York Times COVID-19 Tracker.
Last updated on Monday but showing statistics from a couple weeks ago, the tracker said that the county was averaging two COVID-19 hospital admissions per day on Nov. 11. The tracker said this was a 60-percent decrease compared to 14 days earlier when the rate was at five.
“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 also 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 up 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,” with 1 percent of vaccinations not specifying a home county.
For Ohio, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that the daily average COVID-19 hospital admission rate was 118 on Nov. 11. It said this was an 8 percent increase from 14 days prior.
Statistics from the CDC, updated Monday, said that the test positivity in Ohio has also seen an increase through Nov. 18, with the test positivity now at 12.5 percent from last week and a test volume at 16,631 people from “COVID-19 nucleic antigen amplification tests.”
In the U.S. as a whole, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that two of the four metrics were on the relative increase. The metric falling the most evidently, according to the tracker, is the test positivity rate, which it said has now fallen to 8.4 percent from the period of Nov. 5-11.
Statistics from the CDC showed that hospital admissions are up to 18,119 people for the week ending on Nov. 18.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
