Reports detail how COVID-19 is ripping through Ohio

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting not just Ohio’s major metropolitan areas but is ballooning throughout the state’s rural counties, weekly White House reports provided to state health officials show.

Maps in those reports show that during the past month, the positivity rate in testing has crept upward in many counties that previously didn’t have enough positive tests for the coronavirus to even register on its scale.

Those maps, obtained through a Dispatch public records request, show that in early June, 50 counties had too few cases to even calculate a positivity rate in the two weeks. But by mid-july, that had dropped to 18 counties.

White House Coronavirus Response coordinator

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Ohio has subsided again, B1 Dr. Deborah Birx pointed to the local rate of positive coronavirus tests as a red flag during a visit to Ohio last weekend after putting Columbus and Cleveland on a list of potential COVID-19 hotspots.

Franklin and Cuyahoga counties both had a positivity rate between 5% and 9.9% in the latest White House map, meaning between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 coronavirus tests are coming back positive.

But the Ohio Department of Health isn’t using that data because it doesn’t believe federal authorities are capturing the full picture of testing in Ohio.

State officials say the federal data include only about 80% of the test results. The feds also are totaling tests from hospital-based labs in the county where the facility is located, not based on the patient’s residence.

“It’s not great data, which is why we’re not using it,” said Brian Fowler, the department’s data director. “We’re not that far off from having our own percent positivity by county. We’re essentially waiting to roll that out.”

Birx is worried about a “lever point” Ohio has straddled recently that would make recovery difficult, said Dr. Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer and senior associate vice president at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. Thomas was among the health officials who met with Birx.

Once positivity rates stay above 5%, it’s easy for them to quickly skyrocket, he said. Ohio is one of three states where the COVID-19 positivity rate has pointed to a worsening outbreak, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“The good news is we aren’t Arizona or Texas or Florida,” Thomas said. “It feels OK right now but we are at this really risky point where if we don’t see the positivity rate go down it will shoot up.”

Coming up with a county-level positivity rate has eluded state and local officials for months, but is expected in early August, according to the health department. Labs report every positive case to state and local health officials with details about where it occurred. But the state, to this point, has received only a statewide number for total tests.

The Ohio Department of Health has been working to change its data collection so that it can calculate a countylevel positivity rate, one of three criteria it is still developing to be used in the state’s county alert system.

That will help state and local health officials get a better grip on the spread of the virus. Experts have said that an increase in testing should translate to a decrease in the rate of positivity. Consistent or expanding positivity rates indicate community spread.

“I would feel more confident if I had more accurate data,” said Dr. Mysheika Roberts, Columbus Public Health commissioner.

Columbus Public Health has calculated its own positivity rate based on its available data, but Roberts said it is missing most of the tests from private labs. The week of July 12, Columbus calculated a 12.6% positivity rate.

That includes the city’s own testing program, four hospital systems and federally qualified health centers, she said. Adding in other testing from private labs could dilute the sample enough to bring Columbus into the range on the federal maps, she said.

“That gives us a lot of pause,” Mazzola said. “(It’s) certainly one of those key indicators to give us a proxy measure of community spread in Franklin County.”

Henry County in northwest Ohio had the highest positivity rate in the state by late July, the federal reports show.

That was due to a large outbreak stemming from a July 11 event at a winery, said Mark Adams, Henry County health commissioner. At least 83 are believed to have contracted COVID-19 at the event. The rural county has reported 95 cases overall so far.

Henry County suffered its first COVID-19 related death July 27 but did not say if the man, who was in his 80s, attended the winery event.

Summit County showed a positivity rate between 10% and 19.9% in the latest White House report, far higher than the 5% local health officials found when they did community testing programs in targeted areas.

Those programs have slowed, though, said Marlene Martin, a spokeswoman for Summit County Public Health.

“It’s hard for us to get the lab capacity we need to do the large testing clinics we’ve done in the past,” Martin said. rrouan@dispatch.com @Rickrouan mfilby@dispatch.com @Maxfilby