Leading doctor: No NYE parties

Ohio ranks near top in US for COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations

This month, numerous states nationwide are repeating, if not surpassing, their COVID-19 surges they saw the previous winter. In particular, Ohio is standing out.

The new wave plus the rising omicron variant led Dr. Carl Fichtenbaum, an infectious disease specialist at University of Cincinnati Health, to make a drastic plea ahead of New Year’s Day.

“Yeah, no parties. I would say no parties,” he said. “If you care at all about people who work in hospitals and health care, and you don’t want us to quit our jobs and throw up our hands and go home, I would say no parties.”

From Tuesday to Thursday, the Buckeye State broke its record of reported COVID-19 daily cases three days in a row, now at 15,989 cases as an all-time high. Ohio is still reporting daily numbers above 10,000 as of Monday.

The record-breaking uptick has led

Ohio to rank sixth among all states for the number of cases per capita over the last seven days, at 104 per 100,000 people. Ohio is also sixth for the raw number of daily cases reported at 12,110.

Only New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts are reporting the same or higher number of cases per capita, according to New York Times data.