COVID-19 cases in Highland County have gone up, according to the New York Times COVID Tracker, which said Tuesday that the county was seeing 19 new cases per day, which is about 44 cases per 100,000 in population.
The last time The Times-Gazette reported on COVID-19 data, which was on Aug. 23, 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 Aug. 25.
It said the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen in the county, but deaths have stayed about the same. It also said that the test positivity rate for the county is “very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly under counted.”
The New York Times COVID-19 Tracker gave a COVID-19 update on Aug. 26 for the U.S. as well. It said cases and hospitalizations have been falling steadily during August, which included some states in the West that have seen case declines of 30 percent or more in the last two weeks.
“The average number of cases announced each day is an under count since many cases go unreported, but it has shown significant progress in recent weeks,” the tracker said. “The count of known cases now sits just above 90,000 per day, down from more than 130,000 per day in mid-July.”
It also said hospitalizations have seen a “similar improvement,” with fewer than 40,000 people in American hospitals with the virus.
In other news, Highland County’s COVID-19 case rate stood at 514.4 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 361.4 cases per 100,000 in population over the same period, and ranks the county 17th among the state’s 88 counties in terms of the highest case rates.
In terms of vaccinations, Highland County is currently at 40.65 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 63.67 percent.
In terms of completed vaccines, the state average is 59.00 percent, while the Highland County average is 37.64 percent.
The dashboard also said there have been 7,747 “first booster” doses and 1,449 “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.
