TOLEDO, Ohio — Ohio reported a surprising number of 579 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday. That total was more than double the 21-day average of 270 and the highest total in several weeks.
With the increasing number of headlines about the spread of the Delta variant, the number caused several people, including me, to take a second look.
Toledoan Dan Zemens, who has also been tracking the daily COVID-19 numbers since last April, noticed an oddity in southwestern Ohio and reached out to me. Butler County, which has fewer than 400,000 residents, reported 355 cases on Thursday. A typical total from that area was 8-10 a day. But on Thursday, Butler accounted for nearly 62 percent of the state's cases.
Zemens contacted the health department, which confirmed that a county lab had been incorrectly reporting cases. An internal investigation resulted in a dump of hundreds of old cases. The Ohio Department of Health confirmed the same information to me.
On Friday, Ohio reported 185 cases, a number much more in line with indicators I continue to track. Ohio's positivity rate has dropped to 1.3%, but the majority of counties are well below 1%.
The number of patients hospitalized because of COVID-19 dropped to 242 on Friday, the lowest number seen since last March. There are 69 people in the ICU and 48 on ventilators. In northwest Ohio, there are 18 hospitalized COVID patients, including four in the ICU and one person on a ventilator.
