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Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Although hospitalizations were at a new low growth rate, ICU admissions and deaths jumped back into double digit growth rates. These spikes hopefully reflect only delayed reporting over the Easter weekend.
Caving to media pressure, the DeWine administration said yesterday that it will release information about COVID-19 cases in nursing homes. The DeWine administration made notification to residents and their families of COVID-19 cases mandatory.
<<Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton signed an order Monday to require all long-term care facilities to notify residents and their families within 24 hours of a resident or staff member testing positive for COVID-19.>>
The above Cincinnati.com article also details other new policy initiatives.
The DeWine administration also is preparing a policy initiative to ease stay-at-home orders and reopen the Ohio economy. Reopening the economy when key metrics still are growing even in mid-single digits would seem obviously problematic for anyone who understands compounding. Perhaps both the DeWine administration and the media needs to make clear the significance of a 5 percent DAILY growth rate, let alone 10 percent.
Ironically, states such as Ohio which have had fewer COVID-19 cases than hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have lower herd immunity rates and are more vulnerable to a reescalation of the epidemic.
A friend who is a nurse at the Cleveland Clinic says that they continue to be warned about a spike of cases in May or June. It's likely that the CC anticipates a weakening of social distancing policies to reenergize the rate of COVID-19 infections. Note that the CC hasn't revised its less rosy model about the COVID-19 epidemic peaking in Ohio in mid-May to mid-June.
The highly-praised Univ. of Washington epidemic model presumes that "full" social distancing policies will remain in effect THROUGH MAY. Both the Trump administration and the DeWine administration apparently increasingly rely on this model.
<<Even small changes in those underlying assumptions could lead to massive shifts in a model, said Dr. Angelo DeLucia, an associate professor of molecular virology and cancer at the Northeast Ohio Medical University....
Over the last two weeks, modelers began to realize social-distancing measures were more effective than they anticipated. Ohio residents stayed home to mitigate the spread of the virus, and the models’ projections became less dire as a result.>>
Many Republican politicians from the President to Ohio legislators apparently still don't grasp the basic rules of Epidemic 101, nor the power of compounding in the absence of widespread herd immunity and testing, contract tracing, and enforceable quarantine policies.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Action said Tuesday that the COVID-19 epidemic is plateauing and that it may be several days before meaningful declines are recognized.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther also spoke remotely during the daily COVID-19 news conference and warned about the economic risks of premature or inept rollbacks in the state's social distancing policies.
<<Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, a Democrat, spoke remotely during the press conference. He said that the state needs to be cautious about reopening businesses.
He’s spoken to executives from Columbus, he said, who have told him they financially can’t afford to open and close and open and close, if new spikes of infection and deaths arise.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Most significantly, five-day compounded growth rates for the period ended 4/14 fell to single digits and to new lows for all three metrics. Daily growth rates for 4/15 tied the lows for hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
Gov. Mike DeWine wants hospitals to develop plans to resume elective surgeries. Some hospitals have furloughed employees due to the postponement of elective procedures. Unfortunately, postponements likely are creating a troublesome backlog as most U.S. hospitals operate at near capacity for elective procedures. Shortages of personal protection equipment likely are limiting factors.
Ohio began releasing a list of COVID-19 patients in nursing homes, but, in typically poor DeWine administration disclosure standards, refuses to list Covid-19 deaths by nursing home. Apparently, DeWine's administration even refuses to release total Ohio COVID-19 deaths among nursing home employees and residents.
<<The state is now reporting the number of cases of coronavirus in nursing homes across Ohio, but the Ohio Department of Health would not release the total number of deaths in those facilities.
At least 700 cases of the coronavirus have been reported in Ohio nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, but the state would not release the number of deaths related to the virus when asked for that number Wednesday....
Jack Greiner, attorney for The Cincinnati Enquirer, said privacy laws do not apply to the name of a nursing home or the number of cases.
“Simply releasing the number of COVID-19 related deaths at a nursing home would not reveal the identity of any specific person,” Greiner said.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Doesn't DeWine even suspect a little bit that lifting stay-at-home orders will reaccelerate the growth rate in hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths? Rather than setting a date, IMO a competent epidemic administrator would have set parameters (such as a 1 percent or a negative growth rate in hospitalizations), before beginning to phase out stay-at-home orders in order to provide some slack for the possible need to reestablish strict stay-at-home orders. Perhaps even better parameters might be a greatly increased testing capability, and a much more robust contact tracking and quarantine enforcement procedures, as instituted in South Korea. DeWine unfortunately hasn't considered such measures as perhaps adding National Guard personnel to supplement greatly the tracking staffs of county health departments, or adopting stiff penalties for individuals with active infections who violate quarantines, measures to supply quarantined individuals with needed supplies, and technical means to enforce quarantines (from mobile phone monitoring to ankle GPS bracelets).
Can Ohio phase out stay-at-home orders with metric growth rates at even a seemingly low 4%, or should a phase out wait for zero growth or preferably negative rates of change? Remember these are DAILY growth rates. At a 4 percent growth rate, hospitalizations will reach 7,560 in 30 days and ICU admissions will reach 2,290. Deaths at a 4 percent growth rate, not yet reached, would exceed 1,260; at a 7 percent growth rate (the lowest daily growth rate for deaths, achieved on 4/11), Ohio COVID-19 deaths in 30 days would exceed 2,960 deaths.
Should Ohio also wait to phase out stay-at-home orders until all medical workers and first responders possess the proper personal protection equipment? Ditto, for retail workers, customer-facing workers, factory workers, etc.?
The tough questions about lifting the stay-at-home orders have not been asked. Most importantly, what is the risk of accelerating growth rates and creating a MI-like, let alone a NY-like epidemic? Absent testing, it would be several weeks before we would know whether we had reignited the Ohio COVID-19 epidemic.
DeWine also was challenged about his administration's failure to provide transparency about infections and death totals at nursing homes and hospitals, effectively hiding clusters from public knowledge.
<<The Dispatch and other media organizations have been asking for the numbers — never names of patients — for more than a week. The state Health Department and many county health departments have refused on several occasions to provide the number of deaths in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, without providing a legal justification for withholding the numbers.
When asked Thursday why the state is not releasing the number of deaths in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, as well as the number of workers in hospitals who have tested positive, Gov. Mike DeWine said he wasn’t aware that they were withholding the information but that he wanted to consider the input of hospitals as well as the families of deceased nursing home residents.
But under section 3701.17 (c) of the Ohio Revised Code regarding protected health information, the law states, “Information that is in a summary, statistical, or aggregate form and that does not identify an individual is a public record under section 149.43 of the Revised Code and, upon request, shall be released by the director.”>>
<<“I’ll take a look at that and get back to you,” DeWine said during his daily briefing Thursday.
If state is using statute 3701.17 (b), which protects health information that could be used to identity an individual with other information, David Marburger, an attorney who specializes in the First Amendment and public records law, said that citing that statue to shield the number of deaths in nursing homes is “invalid in every way.
“It’s an insult to the intelligence of Ohioans,” he said.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday described some policies which will be necessary to reopen the economy and lamented the continued lack of testing capacity.
E.g., among policies that will be required of businesses, including restaurants that reopen, will include the following:
<<*Distancing – keeping customers and employees the recommended 6 feet apart
*Masks – it could become commonplace to see employees and customers wearing protective masks
*Barriers – barriers should be placed where social distancing isn’t possible, both in retail and in manufacturing where appropriate.
*More frequent cleaning and sanitizing of surfaces
*Employees wearing gloves and ample opportunities for employees to wash and sanitize their hands
*Standard arrival and departure times for employees, and staggered breaks to avoid crowds
*Working from home where available
*Wellness checks for employees when they arrive to work
*Limits to the number of people allowed inside a business at one time.>>
I wonder if restaurants erect barriers between tables, if they can have a higher capacity than if just 6-foot spacing was implemented. Old-fashioned Chinese restaurants had each table enclosed with servers opening a door/screen to access customers and tables. With 6-foot distancing, some restaurants may not be economical to reopen.
Staggered arrivals and lunch breaks will reduce employee-to-employee contact, and also spread out mass transit loads for workers who use mass transit. In Columbus, all bus rides currently are free with the back door being used for entry and exit. A barrier keeps riders from using seats near the driver. If implemented everywhere in Ohio, bus capacity will be limited without staggered work schedules.
<<When embarking or disembarking the bus, riders will do so from the rear entrance and all fares have been waived at this time. This keeps riders away from drivers and limits contact. >>
DeWine blamed limited testing in Ohio on a shortage of reagents (I just heard NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his daily press conference also attribute testing limits to reagent shortages).
<<The governor lamented that six major hospitals, including Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, have the capacity to run more tests but are “held back” by a lack of “reagent” solution to test for the coronavirus.
Ohio State and the state Health Department are producing test kits with swabs, tubes and the transport liquid that once was in short supply while awaiting federal approval on a newly developed reagent, DeWine said.>>
Unlike NY Gov. Cuomo today, naturally DeWine assigned no blame to the federal government for the reagent shortage, over three months into this crisis. President Trump amazingly claims that testing is the responsibility of individual states, and offers no explanation for shortages of testing materials which everybody assumed was the responsibility of the federal government, and it apparently was until the last week when continued testing shortages became an obvious obstacle to safely lifting stay-at-home orders.
<<But in noting for the need to signficantly expand testing for Covid-19 in the state, Cuomo during a press conference called on the federal government to help New York labs acquire chemical reagents needed to perform those tests.
Cuomo said that reopening state businesses and other public spaces will require a larger number of coronavirus testing than are now being performed, in order to make sure that the virus is not spreading at an excessively high rate.
The lack of sufficient supplies of reagents has been cited by labs in the [NY] state as the main reason that they are not performing the number of tests that they are now capable of doing with their existing testing machines.>>
DeWine implied that once the federal government approves a reagent apparently developed at Ohio State, Ohio will be able to supply its own testing resources and greatly increase its testing capacity over current levels.
<<The governor lamented that six major hospitals, including Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, have the capacity to run more tests but are “held back” by a lack of “reagent” solution to test for the coronavirus.
Ohio State and the state Health Department are producing test kits with swabs, tubes and the transport liquid that once was in short supply while awaiting federal approval on a newly developed reagent, DeWine said.>>
According to the following video, Ohio State and Battelle are assembling 200,000 test kits, over three times the number of tests administered in Ohio, according to the most recent report by Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton. The Ohio State test kits include viral transport media and nasal swabs manufactured using 3-D printers.
Yet as explained by Gov. DeWine, reagent shortages still limit Ohio testing. Ohio State apparently is developing these solutions with no input from the federal government. It took less than a week for Ohio State to develop viral transport media and a formula to manufacture nasal swabs, relying on a national consortium for the test swab development. So the ridiculousness of Ohio developing its own testing solutions in the absence of timely action by the Trump administration is not a point worth mentioning by Gov. DeWine.
The U.S. reportedly needs 2-3 times more testing to safely reopen the economy. Once Ohio can produce its own reagent, the Buckeye state may be able to meet this goal, but little credit should go to the Trump or DeWine administrations IMO, but to the "experts" at Ohio State. The scientists, engineers, front-line medical personnel, first responders, etc. in our society are our real American heroes, not the politicians that have badly mismanaged this crisis IMO.
<<Testing for the coronavirus would have to be at least doubled or tripled from its current levels to allow for even a partial reopening of America's economy, public health experts say, but it is unclear how soon such an ambitious goal could be reached amid persistent shortages of testing supplies and a lack of coordination from the Trump administration....
Erick Blank, chief program officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, which represents local and state-run government health labs, said the shortages of supplies for tests are much the same as they were in late February, when testing first ramped up.>>
<<Even as Donald Trump has delineated his plan to relax social distancing, the United States remains very much in the dark about who has the coronavirus and who does not. We have a shortage of COVID-19 tests, and we simultaneously have the highest number of confirmed cases in the world. Consequently, not every American who wants a test can get one. Not every health-care worker can get one. Not even every patient entering a hospital can get one. Because of the shortages, we are rationing tests, and medical facilities and public-health officials are prioritizing the sickest patients for them....
In New York, for instance, 10,241 tests were performed on April 6, but supply limits forced a huge drop a few days later to 25 total tests. Quest Diagnostics, one of the two biggest firms that run tests, just furloughed 9 percent of its workforce. In addition, news reports suggest that, as of last week, 90 percent of the 15-minute tests developed by Abbott Laboratories are idle due to a lack of necessary reagents and qualified personnel. Testing bottlenecks such as these are major obstacles to getting Americans out of their homes and back on the job.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
The growth rate in ICU admissions on Saturday set a new low daily growth rate since Ohio first began to report the statistic.
The DeWine administration had no press conference on Saturday.
Rich Exner, the Cleveland.com data analyst, has an interesting observation about COVID-19 deaths in Ohio.
While Ohio reports total deaths each day, some of the deaths in the new total are assigned to prior days, according to Exner. So while Ohio deaths increased by 33 to a 451 total on 4/18, Exner says only 6 of these deaths actually occurred on 4/18. The other deaths were assigned to prior days. Similarly, the 4/18 total may increase in subsequent days. I haven't researched where Exner obtains these daily statistics, and it's not necessary as he reports the revised daily totals here under "Date of death for Ohio coronavirus cases."
According to Exner, the daily deaths peaked on 4/18 at 28 and has fallen, or stayed the same, every subsequent day, pending revisions. The 4/18 daily deaths initially are reported at only 6.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
All three metrics posted their lowest daily growth rates yet, but perhaps delayed reporting due to a Sunday explains the sharp declines. Whether or not the metric growth rates expand sharply on Monday will indicate if today's excellent news is a reporting anomaly or not.
There was no DeWine administration press conference today, but Gov. DeWine did appear on "Meet the Press."
DeWine on "Meet the Press" said that a shortage of reagent chemicals is the remaining bottleneck to greatly increased testing in Ohio. Experts say greatly increased testing, contact tracing, and effective quarantine procedures are necessary to safely phase out stay-at-home orders and allow non-essential businesses to resume operations safely. DeWine suggested if the FDA approved a substitute reagent developed at Ohio State, Ohio could begin production of that reagent and ramp up testing.
<<But governors have said are short the necessary equipment to conduct widespread testing. Speaking with "Meet the Press," Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he "could probably double, maybe even triple testing in Ohio virtually overnight if the FDA would prioritize companies that are putting a slightly different formula together for the extraction reagent kit.
'If anyone at the FDA is watching, this would really take our capacity up literally overnight, and that's what we need to get moving in Ohio," he added.>>
While other states report shortages of nasal swabs, another essential testing supply, Ohio already is ramping up its own production of FDA-approved swabs. See post 35 in this thread.
Franklin County (2019 est. population 1.317 million) now has reported slightly more cumulative positive COVID-19 tests than Cuyahoga County (2019 est. population 1.234 million). Marion County has the most cases among Ohio's 88 counties due a cluster of more than 1,500 positive tests at the Marion Correctional Institution.
<<ODH tells 10TV that their most recent data shows at least 1,500 confirmed cases within Marion Correctional Institution.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
On Sunday on "Meet the Press," DeWine had requested that the FDA facilitate approval of a substitute reagent developed at Ohio State so that Ohio could eliminate a remaining bottleneck to increased testing.
DeWine on Monday was silent about the prospect for the FDA's approval of the Ohio State substitute reagent, but said he was satisfied because the FDA said that other substitute reagents are nearing approval.
DeWine seems oblivious to the reality that Ohio may not receive its needed volumes of reagent if Ohio doesn't control its own production.
In fact, the federal government has controlled the allocation of testing supplies and Ohio so far ranks 47th out of the 50 states in testing per capita.
It's probably not a coincidence that Ohio may have been short-changed in testing supplies, proving once again the old adage "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."
Gov. DeWine has never criticized his political ally President Trump for his obvious shortcomings in dealing with this epidemic. Ohio also has been one of the worst states (see post 14 in this thread) in reporting testing statistics. Ohio's lack of transparency about testing, and the failure of Ohio media to protest the absence of the daily testing statistics made available in most states, has resulted in little outcry about the sadly low level of testing in Ohio.
Ohio won't be able to safely exit "stay-at-home" orders without a vastly improved level of testing, contact tracing and contact testing, and the implementation of effective quarantine policies.
There also is evidence that Ohio isn't receiving needed testing supplies and other materials from the federal government due to two political facts: 1) it has a compliant governor who isn't complaining about being short-changed relative to other states; and 2) Ohio may be viewed as a "safe" state by the Trump administration given Trump's relatively large 8.3 victory margin in the Ohio in 2016.
While Ohio ranks 47th in testing per capita, the 2020 battleground state of Florida reportedly has been disproportionately supplied by the federal government.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
After six days of falling growth rate trends for the three tracked metrics, the 4/21 growth rates showed a small spike upwards.
The compounded growth rates for the five-day period ended 4/19 were the lowest yet. All three compounded growth rates had fallen 50 percent or more from the compounded growth rates for the period ended 4/9.
Gov. Mike DeWine announced that former Ohio governors 78-year-old Bob Taft, a Republican, and 82-year-old Dick Celeste, a Democrat, will head a task force to secure testing resources and to expand Ohio COVID-19 virus testing. Too bad IMO the task force isn't headed by expert immunologists and perhaps medical supply experts. DeWine tried to sell the impression that these two governors possessed the expertise to lead this effort, but it's more likely that they most importantly will provide bipartisan political cover for Ohio's poor COVID-19 testing performance and lack of testing disclosure (see post 38). It will be interesting to see if Taft, an old-school Republican, and Celeste, a Progressive Democrat, eventually criticize the testing program of the Trump administration.
DeWine also announced that the FDA had approved a new reagent from Thermo Fisher which DeWine expects will allow Ohio to ramp up testing given the wide use of Thermo Fisher testing machines in Ohio.
<<“This will significantly expand the capacity of these labs. It is not the only thing slowing us down, but it is significant,” DeWine said.
Thermo Fisher is hoping to produce enough of the reagent so that by mid-May [three weeks away], the state will see a “significant increase in tests,” DeWine said. The company is working with other companies to make more reagent kits to ramp up testing in Ohio.>>
I could find no press release from either Thermo Fisher or the FDA regarding this approval, nor an estimate from Thermo Fisher as to when the new reagent will be available and how it will impact testing volumes. I did find this press release about LuminUltra, a Canadian company, that will supply Thermo Fisher reagents to the Canadian national health service for distribution throughout Canadian provinces. Perhaps Celeste and Taft should contact this firm ASAP.
<<Whalen said there are essentially seven or eight reagents used for most testing, comprised of between 15 and 20 raw materials. These can range from simple components like sodium chloride to more complex components like proteinase K.
Testing labs throughout Canada may have different requirements, but Whalen said the Public Health Agency of Canada has requested that LuminUltra build its reagents to work on medical devices produced by the medical technology company, Thermofisher Scientific.
"Typically, the reagents all have the same characteristics, but there's going to be subtle differences between different ones for different machines," Whalen said....
LuminUltra has already begun shipping to the Public Health Agency of Canada and hopes to increase capacity to provide enough reagents for 500,000 tests per week.
"We're doing this for at least a year and we're building up that capacity to be able to increase from that 500,000 if we're so called upon," Whalen said.>>
Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton also warned Ohioans that we likely will have to live with the COVID-19 virus for at least 18 months, likely an estimated time until an effective vaccine is available for use.
<<Acton said there are five things needed to work our way out of a pandemic, including social distancing, contact tracing, isolation, quarantine and treatment.
Acton also said once the state reopens, she expects cases to increase.
Ohio Gov. DeWine said no one can look at May 1 as when we get back to normal, calling it a "high wiring act" of moving forward but doing it in a safe way.>>
[quote=WRnative;57911906]Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Gov. Mike DeWine said on 4/22 that Ohio definitely will allow the resumption of elective surgeries at Ohio hospitals. Interestingly, DeWine apparently has made no comments about how such a resumption will affect scarce supplies of personal protection equipment. Conserving PPE was the original reason given for shutting down elective medical procedures, including surgeries.
Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said 5.6 million Ohioans are working and 1 million are out of work.
The above article reports active COVID-19 cares at Ohio nursing homes, listed by county.
DeWine also denounced a Central Ohio state senator who compared Ohio's "stay-at-home" orders with Nazi Germany and conservatives attacking the need for the Ohio's social distancing policies.
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