“We had 348 new cases this week and that’s about 50 cases per day. Now, remember when we had 100 new cases a day, and we were pushing 150 cases a day back in the middle of December? Now since then we’ve seen a decrease and that’s good news,” Patterson said.
But Patterson cautioned against anyone celebrating the low numbers just yet. He said the health district received a call this week from the Ohio Department of Health’s Coronavirus Wastewater Monitoring Network, which studies samples of wastewater to look for the presence of gene copies or fragments of the RNA that causes COVID-19.
According to ODH’s website, the number of RNA fragments found in the wastewater at the Springfield Waste Water Treatment Plant increased by 53.8% between Dec. 28 and Jan. 11.
“They are projecting an increase in cases right now,” Patterson said. “So they have told us that in the coming seven to 10 days, that we are expecting an increase in COVID cases.”
Patterson said ODH had given the health district the same warning back in December when the county was seeing about 100 cases a day, and cases then jumped up to about 142 cases a day.
“So we do expect an increase and we want people to know that if we want to make this a trend and continue to go down, we have to continue to mask and social distance and stay apart from other people who do not live in our households,” Patterson said. “We are not quite ready to move to that next phase where we can not do those things.”
Clark County had 10,867 cases of the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The county also had 271 deaths and 12 probable deaths, according to data from the CCCHD.
For the second time this week, Ohio reported its lowest number of daily cases over the last three weeks. Just 4,278 cases were reported on Friday, according to ODH, a drop of 3,000 cases from the 7,271 recorded Thursday.
This is the third time Ohio has had fewer than 5,000 cases a day this week, with 4,312 cases reported Monday and 4,989 on Tuesday. Throughout the pandemic, 853,982 total cases have been recorded in Ohio.
Deaths were slightly above the state’s 21-day average of 78 with 81 reported Friday. There have been 10,599 total deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Ohio since the pandemic began, according to ODH.
Facts & Figures:
348: Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Clark County between Jan. 15 and Friday
Nov. 6: Last week that county saw a weekly case count until 400
10,876: Total COVID-19 cases in Clark County
283: Total COVID-19 death in Clark County
Source: Clark County Combined Health District
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