Following a brief respite from COVID-19 at the start of December, Highland County and the rest of the country have seen numbers increase for an extended period of time, according to The New York Times COVID-19 Tracker.
Last updated on Monday, but showing statistics from a couple of weeks ago, the tracker said that the county was averaging four COVID-19 hospital admissions per day on Dec. 30, 2023. The tracker said this was a 42-percent decrease compared to 14 days earlier when the rate was at seven. However, that decrease comes after the significant week-to-week increase from zero cases during the week of Dec. 9, 2023, to seven cases during the week of Dec. 16, 2023.
“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 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 above 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.
For Ohio, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that the daily average COVID-19 hospital admission rate was up significantly to 287 on Dec. 29, 2023. It said that was a 43 percent increase from 14 days prior.
The tracker said that weekly deaths have trailed off significantly in Ohio, as for the week of Dec. 24-30, 2024, there were 49 new deaths, with that number the lowest since the COVID-19 lulls of the 2023 summer. However, the tracker also said that the percentage of deaths due to COVID-19 has been consistently going up since August. It said that for the four-week period of Dec. 3, 2023, to Dec. 30, 2023, the percentage of deaths was 3.8 percent, which was up from the summer numbers of less than 1 percent.
Statistics from the CDC, updated Monday, said that the test positivity in Ohio has seen a decrease through Jan. 6, 2024, with the test positivity now at 14.2 percent from last week and a test volume at 30,250 people from “COVID-19 nucleic antigen amplification tests.”
In the U.S. as a whole, the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker said that the country is also seeing an evident increase in daily COVID-19 hospital admissions. The tracker said that on Dec. 30, 2023, the country saw 7,378 hospital admissions, with that a 32-percent increase from two weeks ago.
The tracker also said that three of its four metrics for the U.S. were on the relative increase. The metric rising the most evidently, according to the tracker, is the percentage of deaths due to COVID-19, which it said has now risen to 3.1 percent for the period of Dec. 3-30.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
