COLUMBUS, Ohio — Despite higher than average case numbers, there are fewer people occupying hospital beds for treatment related to COVID-19.
Each week, Spectrum News 1 speaks with Eye on Ohio: Ohio Center for Journalism about the latest hospital bed data. The organization collects the data from the state health department and looks for possible trends.
The latest numbers were reported March 26. There were 2,752 Med/Surg beds available. That's 350 more than the week before.
"You know from actually getting the virus to being so sick that you need to be in the hospital is at least two weeks, maybe three or four and obviously people tend to stay there much longer than sort of your typical person who has already gotten over COVID by that time, so overall these are the best numbers we've seen," said Lucia Walichus, the executive director of Eye on Ohio.
It's unclear if hospital occupancy will increase as a result of the increased case count. Walinchus said she will be watching for that trend.
Meanwhile, there were 107 more ICU-specific beds available on March 26 than there were on March 19.
Recently, Ohio has documented an uptick in cases — mostly in the 20-30 age group, according to Gov. Mike DeWine.
“We're seeing the virus start to come back up a little bit. We plateaued out for a while. We were going down. Then, we plateaued out. Now, we're seeing a little increase,” DeWine said Monday.
According to the state's last update, which is released every Thursday, Ohio reported 146.9 cases per 100,000 people in the state, which is an increase from the 143.8:100,000 case ratio the previous week.
Editor's Note: "Less" in the headline has been changed to "fewer."