COVID-19 cases in Highland County are down from last week but still up compared to previous months, according to the New York Times COVID Tracker. The tracker said Tuesday that the county was seeing 12 new cases per day, which is about 27 cases per 100,000 in population.

The last time The Times-Gazette reported on COVID-19 data, which was on June 1, The New York Times COVID Tracker said the county was seeing 16 new cases per day, about 37 cases per 100,000 in population.

The tracker gave some of the latest trends for the county. It said that the community level of COVID-19 in the county is “medium” based on cases and hospitalizations, according to the most recent Center for Disease Control (CDC) update on July 7. It said the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has risen in the county, but deaths have stayed about the same.

The New York Times COVID-19 Tracker gave a COVID-19 update on July 7 for the U.S. as well, and said that the number of known cases in the country “remains relatively stable, but rising test positivity rates and the emerging dominance of the BA.5 variant suggest that many places around the country are experiencing new outbreaks of infections.”

The tracker said that the number of new cases reported each day “has always been an under count” and numbers are “especially” low for the week of the update because of delays in the reporting of Fourth of July numbers. It also said despite the delay, more than half of the states in the country are counting higher daily cases than two weeks before the update. The tracker also said states like New York and New Jersey are in the middle of “modest” increases.

“Hospitalizations have increased steadily in recent weeks,” the tracker said. “On average, there are more than 33,000 people in American hospitals with coronavirus on a given day — the highest national average since early March… Fatality data is also in flux after the holiday, but trends remain promising for now. Fewer than 400 deaths are currently reported each day, down from more than 2,600 a day at the height of the Omicron surge.”

In other news, Highland County’s COVID-19 case rate stood at 417.0 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 above the state average of 277.4 cases per 100,000 in population over the same period, and ranks the county 10th among the state’s 88 counties in terms of the highest case rates.

In terms of vaccinations, Highland County is currently at 40.39 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 63.07 percent.

In terms of completed vaccines, the state average is 58.50 percent, while the Highland County average is 37.37 percent.

The dashboard also said there have been 7,554 “first booster” doses and 937 “second booster” doses administered in the county on or after Aug. 12, to people that were already fully vaccinated.

Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.