More than 2 deaths per day as COVID surges in Ohio

More people are getting sick and we’re still a month out from the start of flu season.

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The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) data shows COVID-19 cases are on the rise, with the three-week average of reported cases sitting at just under 7,500.

“We still see an average of more than 200 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and, sadly, an average of 17 deaths each week,” Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, ODH director, said.

In the Miami Valley, healthcare officials are seeing first-hand the number of people in our area coming down with COVID-19.

“We’re hearing more stories about people that fought this off throughout the large part of the pandemic and are now getting sick,” Dr. Roberto Colón, Chief Medical Officer at Premier Health, said.

As reported on News Center 7 at 5:30 , Xavier Hershovitz asked Vanderhoff if he believes the number of cases that are reported may actually be underreported.

“It’s absolutely the case that we don’t have the level of automatic reporting that we had earlier in the pandemic and largely because, as you know, many people are identifying the fact that they have COVID-19 using a home basedness,” Vanderhoff said. “And so we’re not getting all those reports.”

They use waste water detection to help them get an idea of just how much virus is out there. While Vanderhoff says it’s not exactly the same, it gives health leaders a good idea of what’s going on.

“Those have been a pretty good indictor of whether we’re seeing a rise or a decline. We clearly have been seeing a modest rise,” Vanderhoff said.

He suggests people get the latest vaccine even as variants continue to pop up.

“If anybody thought that Covid was done when the pandemic was done, we probably got to reset the expectation. Covid is here to stay for a while, just in a very different way,” he said.

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