Active COVID-19 cases in Hamilton County have dropped for the first time in over a month.
Hamilton County is averaging 1,221 COVID-19 cases per day, down from the county's peak of 2,470 on Jan. 16.
Active cases are currently at 38,000, slightly down from 40,000 reported last week. Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman says numbers are trending in the right direction, but there's still a significant amount of viral activity in the community.
"I don't want us to take it for granted that where we've come and how we've gotten here, we still need to work hard together as a community to get through the rest of the pandemic," Kesterman said.
Hospitalizations are still high in the region. At least 950 people are hospitalized with COVID-19. Of those, 192 people are in the ICU and 130 are on ventilators.
"That is lower than we were a week ago, but to the point that I've already made, it is higher than any other peak in this pandemic," Kesterman said. "We are still inundating our hospitals with people with COVID-19 and so caution still continues to be needed."
Hamilton County is averaging four to five deaths per day from the virus.
Greater Cincinnati's positivity rate is at 31.7% while Hamilton County's is at 17.64%, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker.
More than 176,000 cases have been confirmed in Hamilton County during the pandemic. More than 5,200 hospitalizations and 1,800 deaths from the virus occurred during the same time frame.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Department of Health said an electronic lab processing error led to underreported numbers of positive cases. The state’s COVID dashboard shows fewer than 5,000 positive COVID cases in Ohio. The counts were also off after the holidays, in the days following Christmas and New Year's celebrations, when the virus appeared to be causing record high case numbers.
Here's a look at current vaccine rates in Hamilton County:
