Coronavirus: Most area counties rank in lower half of state for positive test results

Most of the counties in the Miami Valley ranked in the lower half of the state for coronavirus positivity, according to new data from the Ohio Department of Health.

Positivity rates refer to the percentage of people tested for the COVID-19 who tested positive.

Ohio reported its first county-level breakdown of coronavirus positivity rates today, and it plans to release new positivity data weekly.

In the Dayton area, by far the county that ranked highest on the list was Mercer County, which ranked fifth in the state in terms of positivity with 9.7% of all people tested testing positive.

The next counties that ranked in the upper half of the state were Clark and Greene counties, which tied at 6.2%. This puts them around the top-quarter line out of the 88 counties.

After those two counties is Montgomery County, which the ODH reported saw a 5.2% positivity rate.

The remaining counties in the area ranked in the lower half of the list.

Highest among these was Butler Count with 4.4%, followed by Champaign County with 4.3%, Warren County with 4.2% and Miami County with 4.1%.

Further down the list was Darke County, with 3.9% of all its tests returning positive results.

Finally, the county in the area with the lowest rate of positive coronavirus test results was Preble County, which saw a 3.2% positivity rate. That is one of the 15 lowest positivity rates in the state.

The highest positivity rate in Ohio was reported in Lawrence County at the southern tip of the state with 10.4%. The lowest was 1.7% in Noble County in southeastern Ohio.

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