TOLEDO, Ohio — New COVID cases continued their steady rise in the latest report from the Ohio Department of Health.
The state reported Thursday afternoon that there have been 5,361 new infections in the past week. That's a significant jump from last week's total of 4,226 cases. Two weeks ago, there were fewer than 3,000 cases.
By comparison, it is still a sliver of the numbers the state was experiencing at the same time last year. There were more than 23,000 new infections during the same week in 2022.
One big difference, however, is that COVID tests are not as easily available or administered as freely as years past, so the true number of infections is likely much higher.
More concerning is that weekly hospitalizations continue to increase. Thursday's number was 111 -- also a sharp increase from last week -- and it supports new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the CDC said it expects hospitalizations to steadily increase over the months ahead. Recently, the agency had predicted that numbers would be stable into the fall.
However, to keep the rise in perspective, there are still far fewer hospital patients with COVID than there were last year. As of Thursday, there are 206 patients with COVID, including 20 in northwest Ohio. One year ago, there were 1,252 total patients with COVID.
The main driver behind the rising cases is a number of new variants that have been popping up around the country. Though it's not yet dominant, a variant known as "Pirola" is of concern to medical experts.
Symptoms do not seem to be any more extreme than current or past variants, but it has dozens of new mutations. What that means is that past infection or vaccination is not likely to prevent another infection.
Current vaccine manufacturers are expected to begin rolling out updated boosters next month or in October. Those boosters provide a shield against recent omicron variants, but it is unclear how protective it is against Pirola and other highly mutated variants. However, it is believed that vaccination still offers protection against serious illness.