How Ohio Is Weathering Pandemic: See New Weekly Virus Data

OHIO — New data released by the White House is providing a snapshot of how Ohio is handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the previous administration, the White House COVID-19 Team compiled weekly reports tracking pandemic growth in each individual state, but the reports were kept private. This week, White House COVID-19 Data Director Cyrus Shahpar confirmed over Twitter that, going forward, the data would be shared publicly.

Here's a look at how Ohio fared on its first State Profile Report.

Note that, while the report was first released Wednesday, the data below represents cases from the 7-day week ending Sunday, Jan 24.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Ohio officials used a set of key metrics to track pandemic progress including: new cases and hospitalizations per day, test positivity rates, and and county-by-count cases per 100,000 residents. The White House COVID-19 Team's report uses similar metrics, and for most of them.

Deaths and hospitalizations related to the virus tend to lag behind case confirmation, so previous surges in cases are still powering Ohio's COVID-19 deaths. In fact, deaths tend to lag even behind hospitalizations and COVID-19 hospital admissions in Ohio are also slowing.

The vast majority of Ohio's counties remain in the so-called "red zone" for COVID-19 spread (meaning there's a high occurrence of the virus locally). Based off the state health department's own color-coded system, only five counties are not classified as red: Hocking, Vinton, Gallia, and Monroe. Hamilton County is "purple" meaning it has more spread than even red counties.

Finally, the report ranks all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, based on their number of new cases per every 100,000 residents. In that ranking, Ohio comes in 25th, the direct middle of the list.

All 52 state profile reports can be found here. They will be updated weekly.