On the heels of a "Mount Everest" caseload of COVID-19 in Hamilton County, local health officials gave an impassioned warning to the community that the omicron variant is spreading like wildfire and has yet to reach its peak.
The assessment came as the number of confirmed U.S. cases of COVID-19 hit more than 57 million – or one for every six people in the country. It also comes as the demand for testing remains high – and as there's news of two National Guard-run sites coming to southwest Ohio.
"This pandemic is not over," Dr. Richard Lofgren, president and chief executive officer of UC Health, said during a virtual COVID-19 news conference Wednesday. "In fact, it is heating up more and more intense than it ever has been in the entire almost two years that we've been wrestling with this."
In just one week, the county has nearly doubled the number of active cases of COVID it has in the community. Last week, Hamilton County had 11,700 active cases compared to 20,141 active cases this week. The positivity rate for COVID-19 tests hit a pandemic record of 26.5% Monday, according to data on the Health Collaborative Situational Dashboard.
During the coronavirus surge in December 2020, the county hit a peak of 716 cases per day. On Wednesday, the county reported what Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman called a "Mount Everest" of 1,472 cases per day.
"Without a top of the mountain in sight, we continue to grow day-after-day," Kesterman said at the conference. "...We continue to see a lot of continued growth of this pandemic in our community."
Though the omicron variant, which officials said is showing up in 80 to 90 percent of cases being tested, hasn't proven to be as severe as previous variants, people are still getting sick, Lofgren warned.
"How contagious (omicron) is, is just stunning and frightening," Lofgren said. "It truly doubles the number of cases every two to three days. ...One of the things that's starting to emerge is that it is not causing quite the intensity of disease that delta did. Delta had a lot of severe disease in younger adults, and it is true that we're starting to see in evidence that it (omicron) causes less severe disease."
But omicron "isn't a benign disease," Lofgren added, and the increase in activity leaves the Cincinnati area's 40s hospitals on the verge of being overwhelmed, as is the situation in Cleveland, he contended.
"You hear stories about patients getting admitted to the hospital that require a ventilator and they sit in the emergency room two to three or four days waiting for an ICU bed, not knowing what to do," Lofgren said. "So there's no question that this surge of cases, though less of them are translating into hospitalizations, there's so many more of them, that the hospitals are in fact getting overwhelmed."
Hospitalizations are at a record high, Kesterman said. There are 825 individuals at the county's hospitals currently with COVID, while 177 of those individuals are in the intensive care unit, and 128 are on ventilators.
Deaths have also climbed slightly compared to last summer. The county is averaging around four deaths per day and could see that number increase in the next few weeks, Kesterman said.
"It's astounding to me that these numbers are so high," County Commissioner Denise Driehaus said. "We've seen trends, we've seen peaks and valleys. This is an astoundingly high number of positive cases in Hamilton County. And I know we've said this before, but this is a wake-up call. We need to practice what we know works" including masking indoors, avoiding large gatherings and washing hands.
What's the local toll since the COVID pandemic started?
A total of 4,542 residents of the 16-county region have been reported as dying of COVID-19, an Enquirer analysis shows. A total of 379,219 cases of the illness had been reported as of Tuesday, up 9,154 from the day before - a number a little larger than the entire population of Cheviot. That number may not reflect the full picture because some people have had the disease more than once – and an untold number of infections aren't in the total because they were discovered by people using in-home tests and were not reported to health officials.
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