Mapping Ohios 363,304 coronavirus cases, updates, trends; half of total in just the last 5 weeks – cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohios coronavirus case total has surged so much this fall that 1-in-32 residents statewide is now known to have contracted the virus, most of them during just the last five weeks.

The addition of 11,885 cases reported by the Ohio Department of Health on Monday means that the total has doubled to 363,304, from 181,787 on Oct. 18.

Many more people may also have been diagnosed. But Gov. Mike DeWine said the state in the last few days has fallen behind in processing the records both because of the overwhelming volume and in delays from labs.

Deaths reported to date increased from 5,067 to 6,020 during the same time period - Oct. 18 through Monday. But it is premature to know the extent of new deaths that may be related to the recent surge in cases. Deaths often occur weeks after the onset of systems, and then are delayed further until they are reported by the state.

Ohio has reported at least 6,000 new coronavirus cases each of the last 12 days.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

Separate data compiled by the Ohio Hospital Association shows the patient count in hospitals is up more than five-fold since the beginning of October, with 4,358 patients hospitalized as of Monday across the state.

There were 1,685 patients on Nov. 1 and 700 on Oct. 1 as the fall surge in cases was just beginning to take off. Among the current total, a record 1,079 were being treated in intensive care units. This is up from 449 on Nov. 1 and and 196 on Oct. 1.

Though hospital bed capacity has not become a problem yet, hospital officials are concerned both with the upward trend of new hospitalizations and a shrinking amount of available staff. For example, the Cleveland Clinic said 970 of its caregivers were not available, either because they had COVID-19 or were being quarantined.

More than 4,000 COVID-19 patients are now in Ohio hospitals.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

The vacancy rate statewide was reported Monday at 30.5%, down slightly from 30.9% a week ago. There were 8,266 vacant beds, 4,358 in use by COVID-19 patients and 14,516 in use by other patients. Hospital officials have been working to free up more space for COVID-19 patients. A week ago, there were 17,552 non-COVID patients hospitalized.

The ICU vacancy rate was reported at 24.8%, a tightening from 27.5% a week ago - 1,240 vacant beds, 1,079 being used by ICU patients and 2,503 by other patients.

The number of deaths now reported at 6,020 increased by 278, or 4.8%, from the previous weeks total of 5,742. Deaths reported daily over the last week were 24, 41, 0, 65, 63, 55 and 30. The reports lag several days from the actual date of death and sometimes are reported by the state in clusters.

Both new coronavirus case totals and patients hospitalized have been increasing in Ohio.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

The 57,940 cases added in the last week amounted to a 19% increase from 305,364. This compares with increases the previous weeks of 50,390, 33,065, 21,678, 16,607, 13,445, 10,215, 8,162, 6,637 and 6,681.

Ohio had 557.9 cases per 100,000 residents over the seven days, including highs in Noble County (1,012.2 per 100,000), Darke (917.6), Tuscarawas (915.3), Defiance (903.2) and Mercer (901.1).

Six of the seven Greater Cleveland counties were below the statewide average for new cases. Only Lake County was higher at 828.2 newly reported cases per 100,000 residents, followed by Geauga (508.3), Medina County (495.7), Lorain (492.2), Cuyahoga (484.2), Summit (449.7), and Portage (399.5).

Testing for coronavirus is a record levels in Ohio, but not so much so as to explain the increased known spread of the virus.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

The state reported that 5,718,750 tests have been conducted to date. This includes 415,682 in the last week, more than during any seven-day period since the start of the pandemic.

In comparison, the state during the previous eight weeks reported 398,821, 51,979, 328,098, 293,230, 278,874, 273,083, 281,328, 249,350, 232,298, 196,815 and 181,579 tests. During the last week of May, about 60,000 tests were conducted.3

The health department estimates that 230,678 Ohioans have recovered from COVID-19. This is not based on individual case information, but on the number of cases at least three weeks old that have not resulted in death.

Based on the estimate for recoveries, a record 126,606 Ohioans currently have the coronavirus, up from 94,424, 63,196, 44,912 and 35,137 the last four weeks.

More than 125,000 Ohioans are estimated to currently have coronavirus.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

The state is now reporting that the onset of symptoms was as early as January for 107 cases. The seven earliest cases date to Jan. 2 in Erie, Licking, Lucas, Mahoning (2), Summit and Warren counties.

The age range for cases is from under 1 to 109, with a median age of 42. The median age for deaths is 80.

The health department last updated the number of deaths for nursing home patients on Wednesday, with a total of 3,523, representing close to 60% of all known COVID-19 deaths in Ohio at that point. This share has dropped in recent months.

For all cases this year, more than three-fourths of the deaths have been to people age 70 and up. By age group the deaths have broken down this way: under age 20 (4), in their 20s (13), in their 30s (42), in their 40s (96), in their 50s (333), in their 60s (824), in their 70s (1,528) and at least 80 years old (3,179).

Those 80 and up accounted for 44% of deaths from all causes nationally in 2017.

Deaths from coronavirus were known to be highest in the spring in Ohio.Rich Exner, cleveland.com

But for hospitalizations, the cases are more spread out age-wise: under age 20 (549), in their 20s (1,081), in their 30s (1,451), in their 40s (2,128), in their 50s (3,851), in their 60s (5,232), in their 70s (5,547) and at least 80 years old (4,858).

The counties with the most deaths are Cuyahoga (736), Franklin (665) and Lucas (409), with 16 more deaths in Cuyahoga, 14 in Franklin and nine in Lucas.

For the deaths in which race was reported, 80% of the people are white, and 16% are Black. For total cases, 71% are white and 16% Black. Ohios population is 82% white and 13% Black, census estimates say.

Among all cases reported to date, 24,705 have been hospitalized, including 4,454 in intensive care up from 22,478 and 4,223 a week ago. This means up from that in the last week, the state learned of 1,859 new hospitalizations, 204 in ICUs.

The counties with the most cases are Franklin (49,267), Cuyahoga (35,214) and Hamilton (29,462). They are the states three largest counties. Cases per capita are shown in the chart at the bottom of this story.

The first three cases were confirmed on March 9. The total topped 100 on March 19, 1,000 on March 27, 10,000 on April 18, 100,000 on Aug. 9, 200,000 on Oct. 26 and 300,000 on Nov. 16.

The state on April 10 began new reporting standards to include more types of testing and cases identified from non-testing evidence. This has resulted in 19,250 probable cases being included in the total cases reported for Ohio to date.

Corrections in the data are made from day to day by the state. Sometimes the state has reduced the number of cases in individual counties from one day to the next as corrected residency information is received.

The chart below is based on the most recent case data from the Ohio Department of Health. Cleveland.com calculated the cases per 100,000 rates based on 2019 census population estimates.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.

Some mobile users may to use this link instead to view the county-by-county case, hospitalization and death chart above.

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Mapping Ohios 363,304 coronavirus cases, updates, trends; half of total in just the last 5 weeks - cleveland.com