Cases of COVID-19 are slightly down in Highland County, according to the New York Times COVID Tracker. The tracker, last updated on Monday, said the county was seeing 3.0 new cases per day, which is about 7.0 cases per 100,000 in population.
The last time The Times-Gazette reported on COVID-19 data, which was on May 2, 2022, The New York Times COVID Tracker said the county was seeing 3.3 new cases per day, about 7.6 cases per 100,000 in population.
According to the tracker, the Chillicothe ICU at the Adena Regional Medical Center has only one remaining bed and the Highland District Hospital and the Adena Greenfield Medical Center ICUs both have “no data.”
The tracker gave some of the latest trends for the county. It said that the community level of COVID-19 in the county is “low” based on cases and hospitalizations, according to the most recent Center for Disease Control (CDC) update on May 12. It said the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has climbed in the county but deaths have stayed about the same.
Concerning the rest of the country, the tracker gave a COVID-19 update on May 13 that said “the virus continues to spread at an alarming pace nationwide” with daily case reports increasing “threefold” since the beginning of April. It said that cases have risen in almost every state “but the Northeast and Midwest have been especially hard hit.”
The tracker also said that hospitalizations are increasing, but more “modestly” compared to the rise in cases, with the number of patients in American hospitals with the virus rising by 20 percent in the last two weeks.
In other news, Highland County’s COVID-19 case rate stood at 101.9 cases per 100,000 in population over the previous two weeks, according to the Ohio Department of Health Coronavirus Dashboard, which was last updated Thursday. The case rate was below the state average of 205.7 cases per 100,000 in population over the same period, and ranks the county 67th among the state’s 88 counties in terms of the highest case rates.
In terms of vaccinations, Highland County is currently at 40.21 percent of the county’s residents that have started their vaccines, according to the ODH COVID-19 Vaccination Dashboard which was last updated on Thursday. The state average for “vaccine started” is 62.63 percent.
In terms of completed vaccines, the state average is 58.12 percent, while the Highland County average is 37.16 percent.
The dashboard also said there have been 7,398 “First Booster” doses and 550 “Second Booster” administered in the county on or after Aug. 12, to people that were already fully vaccinated.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
