Fact check

With diseases like the flu and coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report a mortality rate or the percentage of people who die following a positive diagnosis.

According to the latest data from the Ohio Department of Health, the state had 62,913 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,807 confirmed deaths as of Monday . That’s an overall mortality rate of just over 4.5%, or a survival rate of just under 96%.

It’s also a more conservative estimate than the one you would get from using the poster’s numbers. He appears to use an earlier version of combined totals, which incorporate both confirmed and probable cases. An attempt to reach the poster for clarification on the source of his numbers was unsuccessful, but the mortality rate for Ohio’s combined numbers as of Monday was 4.6%.

Nursing home deaths do account for most of Ohio’s coronavirus deaths. According to the most recent data available, COVID-19 has killed 2,101 people in Ohio nursing homes, 86 people in prison and 877 others.

Fifty-three percent of the deaths in Ohio involved those age 80 or older.

So, what’s the mortality rate for those not in nursing homes or prisons?

If you divide the number of deaths outside those locations with the total number of confirmed cases, that’s a death rate of 1.32% for people who aren’t in either. However, that is inaccurate.

Here’s why: You need to remove the total number of confirmed cases in nursing homes and prisons to get an accurate death-rate percentage for the general population.

Staff members and residents of Ohio nursing homes show 11,802 cases, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction reported it had 5,076 positive coronavirus cases as of Monday.

That’s a combined total of 16,878 cases as of Monday. When you subtract that from Ohio’s total number of cases, you get a mortality rate for the average population of about 1.8%, or more than five times the rate claimed in the Facebook post.

What are the odds I’ll get the virus?

The post also addresses the likelihood of contracting COVID-19 in Ohio.

The image is correct in that Ohio is home to about 11.74 million people. The estimate comes from the American Community Survey via the U.S. census.

If you simply divided the number of confirmed cases at the time of the post by the state’s total population, you do indeed get 0.49%. (It’s about 0.53% now.)

The problem is that’s the overall percentage of the population who has contracted the coronavirus. It doesn’t represent an individual’s chances of contracting the disease.

Perhaps more seriously, health officials have said all along that confirmed cases represent only a fraction of actual cases, many of which are asymptomatic. That means using only confirmed cases to calculate the odds of getting COVID-19 will fall well short of the actual figure.

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike Dewine recently issued mandatory mask requirements in 12 counties where cases are spiking. Some of these counties are around Ohio’s major cities such as Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

The mask requirements moved those Ohio counties to a Level 3 rating (on a scale in which 4 is the worst), which means a “very high exposure and spread,” with residents urged to “limit activities as much as possible,” according to the state’s designations.

Basically, your chances of contracting COVID-19 in these places are higher than in other parts of the state.

It also depends on a person’s occupation. First responders, restaurant servers and grocery store clerks all have a higher risk of contracting the coronavirus. Ohio’s legislature is working to pass a bill that would add COVID-19 to its list of work-related injuries that are eligible for compensation.

Our ruling: Partly false

Some of the numbers in the Facebook post are correct, but the conclusions it draws about the likelihood of specific Ohioans to both contract and survive the coronavirus are inaccurate. Therefore, we rate the post PARTLY FALSE based on our research.

Our fact-check sources:

National Cancer Institute - Definition of survival rate

Ohio Department of Health - Case count

Ohio Department of Health - Key metrics on mortality

Ohio Department of Health - COVID-19 Inmate Testing

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction - Fact sheet

Columbus Dispatch, 7-9-20 - “Coronavirus: Fairfield, Pickaway counties now ‘red,’ must wear masks”

Columbus Dispatch, 6-3-20 - “Senate GOP votes to shield Ohio businesses, health-care workers from coronavirus lawsuits”

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook, which has no say over its content. astaver@dispatch.com @Annastaver