Hamilton County is averaging 327 COVID-19 cases per day, a jump of more than 100 from the previous week.
During Tuesday's Hamilton County Commission meeting, Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman again stressed that numbers are headed in the wrong direction. He says active cases increased by more than 1,000 in just one week, bringing the total to roughly 6,900.
"Cases, as you've heard me say throughout the pandemic, always translate into hospitalizations and that's no different today," Kesterman said. "We are at 546 within the (region's) hospitals."
Of those patients, 135 are in the ICU with 107 on ventilators.
"At the point you get to a ventilator in the ICU, we've done a lot of treatment, the hospitals have done lots of different things to try and keep you out of there," Kesterman said. "Your prognosis if you get to that point is about 50% chance of survival."
According to the CDC COVID Data Tracker, Hamilton County is averaging slightly more than 294 cases per 100,000 people. Sixteen people died from the virus in the last seven days. Commissioner Stephanie Summerow Dumas reminds citizens the pandemic is still far from ending.
"When I go to different meetings in other places, people are not wearing masks and they think it's over," Summerow Dumas said. "We want it to be over but this definitely is not over, and we need to do everything we can do to wear our masks (and) get our vaccinations."
Despite concerns of the omicron variant growing, Kesterman reminds the community that the delta variant is still the main variant of concern.
"There is no known omicron variant in Ohio, it's not to say it's not here but we don't know about it," Kesterman said. "But we know delta is here and you see what's happening in the hospitals, so the number one way to take care of this is through vaccination."
Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 115,000 people in Hamilton County have contracted COVID-19. In that same time frame, more than 4,500 people have been hospitalized and more than 1,500 have died.
More than 61% of the county's total population has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. Within the Greater Cincinnati region, at least 73% of people ages 12 and up have received a dose.
