Ohio will likely go the wrong direction on the state's sole metric for lifting coronavirus restrictions for the second week in a row.
Gov. Mike DeWine has set a benchmark for when all state-mandated health orders will be lifted: 50 new cases per 100,000 residents during two weeks.
That number, called incidence rate, is expected to be a little less than 167.6, according to a USA TODAY Network Ohio analysis of Wednesday's state coronavirus data. That figure includes people in jails and prisons, who are excluded from the state's official number released on Thursdays.
That's higher than last week's rate of 146.9 and 143.8 the week before. It's down from an all-time high of 845.5 cases on Dec. 16 and 204.2 cases on Feb. 24. Ohio was last below the benchmark on June 24, 2020.
The rate is not based on the date a case is reported but its "onset date," typically the date someone first felt sick or had a positive coronavirus test result.
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Ohio is the only state relying solely on the metric to determine when to lift restrictions, and several other states with higher case rates have rolled back or eliminated mask mandates, business capacity limits and more in recent weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used a two-week incidence number to measure spread early on in the pandemic but has since shifted to a seven-day calculation for visualizing spread.
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, the state's chief medical officer, said in early March that using a two-week interval is a "more sensible approach" at the state level. The two-week incidence rate is one of seven metrics the state has been using to evaluate spread within a county since July.
Ohio would still be considered to have "substantial transmission" by the CDC's revised guidelines, with about 79 new cases per capita during the past seven days. That's despite an average coronavirus test positivity rate of 3.9%, placing the state in the "low transmission" category.
Vanderhoff and health professionals have raised the alarm of new variants of the coronavirus that could be more contagious and increase spread as vaccinations ramp up.
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