TOLEDO, Ohio — Despite a rapid increase in people vaccinated across the United States, there has been a slight increase in COVID cases in Lucas County; and over the border in Michigan, there's been a surge.
"We can attribute this most to the variants. So you see a lot of testing going on about the variants, the B-117 which is the UK variant, it's the one we're seeing most prevalent; it's more severe," Dr, Brian Kaminski with ProMedica said.
Kaminski says Northwest Ohio needs to watch what's happening in Michigan, where there are more cases in Monroe County than almost anywhere in the country, according to the New York Times.
"We live in a porous border between Ohio and Michigan, there are plenty of people who cross the state line on a daily basis for work or for family or for other reasons," Kaminski said.
Kaminski believes that we are inching closer to the end of the pandemic with how fast the vaccine rollout has been, especially since all adults are now eligible for the vaccine in both states.
He says new data rolling in shows vaccinated people aren't among those being hospitalized.
"The take-home message is we're really almost there. We've vaccinated 30 percent of the population, meaning about 30-percent of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine," Kaminski said.
Kaminski says there's still a way to go before we reach herd immunity, but this 30-percent benchmark is a good first step.