Governor Mike DeWine speaks with members of the Ohio Hospital Association to get an update on COVID-19 hospitalizations throughout the state.
More than 4,100 people are currently in the hospital with coronavirus-related symptoms, including more than one thousand on intensive care units and more than 500 on ventilators, according to state health department data.
One person that spoke on Monday was Ronda Lehman with Mercy Health St. Rita's. She says one-third of their in-patient census are COVID-related. They're seeing more people coming into the hospital than people being discharged, and that's starting to cause some issues.
"There’s definitely data to say that there’s not as many people who are passing away from COVID, but the morbidity of that and the ability to discharge patients safely back to their homes and have oxygen set up and have homecare set up or have skilled nursing facilities placement - those are all pieces of a healthcare puzzle that are also being very taxed by all of this," said Lehman, who is president of St. Rita's.
The Ohio Hospital Association members also urged people to be mindful as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches.
"Until we see cases peak and start coming down in a sustained way, we’re going to see hospitalizations continue to rise," said Andrew Thomas with the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "I don't think we can sound the alarm bells loud enough to the people of the state of Ohio to change their behaviors."
The Associated Press says the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Ohio has risen over the past two weeks from nearly 4,500 new cases per day on November 8th, to more than 7,600 per day on November 22nd.
