Coronavirus

to Ohio Department of Health Director Stephanie McCloud.

All COVID deaths will be confirmed through death certificate information, which can take weeks to several months to be finalized. Ohioans might see some fluctuations in death data as the switch is made to the new system.

Previously, the state health department had to manually reconcile death data as it was added to the COVID19 dashboards. This led to a greater risk of error, McCloud explained.

“We were engaged in a manual process that attempted to provide information in real time,” she said. “Manual processes are fraught with more opportunities for mistakes and human error.”

Aside from improving the COVID death reporting, the DeWine administration is asking lawmakers to approve $25 million in the proposed state budget to upgrade antiquated information technology systems so that health data can be collected, analyzed and displayed in real time.

The first step is to address the death reporting and then look at the larger IT upgrades, McCloud said.

“We are trying to solve, in the midst of the crisis, a reliability in our death reporting data. That is the genesis of this change,” McCloud said. She likened it to trying to build a plane as it is flying. “We would love to land this thing but some of the larger, overarching issues will have to wait until we land the plane. And we are determined to land this plane safely.”

The state recorded 1,709 daily COVID cases Tuesday, bringing Ohio’s total to 970,583. Hospitalizations increased by 121 for a total of 50,503. Ohio reported 12 ICU admissions, bringing the total to 7,160.

As of Tuesday, Ohio has reported 16,750 total deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Nearly 15% of Ohio’s population, more than 1.72 million people, has received one dose of the coronavirus vaccine and just over 8%, 938,600 people, has completed the vaccine.