TOLEDO, Ohio — Ohio has now passed through two major events - Memorial Day and the George Floyd protests - without the surge in coronavirus cases that medical experts feared.
In fact, numbers continue to trend downward in key areas.
As we have discussed before, total cases and deaths grab the headlines, but they are unreliable numbers to give us an accurate assessment of where we are in the pandemic.
The state continues to ramp up testing in nursing homes, and testing overall.
Reporting of deaths lags as much as several weeks.
But, if we do look at averages for those two categories, they are still falling. The seven-day average last week for new cases was 456 and 32 deaths. This week so far, the average is 363 new cases and 20 deaths.
The hospitalization numbers, which provide the clearest indication of where we currently stand, are even more definitive.
The total patients hospitalized on Wednesday in Ohio is 575, while the daily average last week was 734. The hospital numbers are the lowest since we began tracking them in late April.
There have been no new hospitalizations in Lucas County in six days, and Wood County in five days.
ICU patients numbered 298 a day last week. That number was 232 on Wednesday.
That same trend holds for patients on ventilators; the average was 202 last week, and so far this week, the average is 158.
The only red flag at this point is that total cases jumped by 88 from Tuesday and new hospital admissions have climbed the last two days. However, both of those numbers are still within the recent averages. They only look somewhat alarming because of the sharply lower overall numbers since Saturday.
On Wednesday, playgrounds, movie theaters, zoos, aquariums and museums were allowed to reopen. Much of the state has now returned to business.
Medical experts are still expecting cases to surge at some point, but there is no sign of that just yet.
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