COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state could be at an unforseen tipping point when it comes to beating the coronavirus.

What You Need To Know

  • Eye on Ohio: The Ohio Center for Journalism fought the state for access to the number of available hospital beds and other equipment related to COVID-19

  • Eye on Ohio filed a lawsuit in the Court of Claims of Ohio in order to obtain the requested information

  • In November, Judge Patrick M. McGrath ruled the Ohio Department of Health must provide the requested information

Each week, Spectrum News 1 speaks with Eye on Ohio: Ohio Center For Journalism about the latest hospital bed data. The organization collects the latest data from the state health department and looks for possible trends.

Lucia Walinchus is the executive director.

"Two weeks ago we saw a huge improvement. Last week, the numbers weren't bad overall, but we backslid a little bit," Walinchus said.

One trend Eye on Ohio is examing, centers around available ICU beds. There were a little less than 1,300 available intensive care unit beds throughout the state on March 1, but the latest data from March 19 shows there were only 579 available ICU beds.

Meanwhile, more people are getting vaccinated. There are a number of possible reasons to explain the decrease in available beds, but Walinchus said one reason could be that people are moving too quickly to get back to normal and easing thier own self-imposed social-distancing restrictions.

"There is definitely an effect there from the vaccine, but there's also an effect probably from people increasing their contacts with other people and we're seeing that in the data," she said. 

The state health department releases the latest data to Eye on Ohio each week.