“I’m asking every Ohioan to continue to pull back and limit your activities. There is a cause and effect to what we do — we can slow this down,” he said. The scariest thing is that there is no indication that we have plateaued. We haven’t seen anything like this for 100 years.”
Those warnings came as Butler County on Monday reported 16,923 coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, which was a 14.2% increase from the previous week. A detailed weekly coronavirus update released Monday shows 154 deaths in the county but fewer hospitalizations in the past week.
Registered Nurse Jamie Giere of Premier Health’s Upper Valley Medical Center in Troy also spoke during the press conference.
“Back in March we were seeing five, 10, 12 patients. Now it’s evolved into so much more,” she said.
People who would enter the hospital requiring 2 liters of oxygen “so very quickly they would require 8 liters, 12 liters … and ultimately wind up on the ventilator
“We’re seeing healthy individuals and they decline so quickly. Now it feels like the COVID population has been getting younger and younger,” Giere said.
Ohio broke a record Monday with more than 5,000 coronavirus patients in hospitals across the state.
“It’s a 200 percent increase just since Nov. 1″ in hospital patients, Thomas said. “A third of the patients in the ICU across Ohio has COVID. One third of the patients in a ventilator in the ICU has COVID,” Thomas said.
While DeWine said he is encouraged by retail reports that more than 90% of people have been wearing masks, the next step is for people to reduce contact with others by 20%.
“Make the grocery list and go once a week instead of a few times,” he said.
He added that the first vaccine shipment expected to arrive Dec. 15 in Ohio.
“Vaccine appears almost ready to go,” DeWine said.
State employees initially were scheduled to start returning to work in early January, but that has been put on hold, DeWine said.
Two Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction employees have died due to the coronavirus. Officer Steven Cook who worked at Dayton Correctional Institution died Wednesday and DeWine said he learned Monday of the death of officer Mark Jones, at Trumble Correctional Institution.
As of Monday, Ohio has reported 421,063 total cases of coronavirus, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The state recorded more than 60,000 cases and 400 deaths last week. The backlog is about 7,500 antigen tests, DeWine said. When the cases are entered into the system, there will be a one-day artificial surge.
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