​​COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is “deeply concerned” about the direction the pandemic is heading in Ohio, he said Wednesday as the state reported the most cases in a day since January.

​​Ohio reported 6,081 new cases on Wednesday, a second consecutive recent high after Tuesday’s report of 5,914 cases. 

“We're deeply concerned about what is going on,” DeWine told reporters in Columbus. “This delta variant is very contagious. It's more contagious than what we were dealing with a year ago.”

The governor shared a comparison of Ohio’s current COVID-19 numbers to the levels on July 9, which was a low point before the current surge began.

• Hospitalizations increased from 200 to 2,468
• ICU admissions increased from 56 to 716
• Ventilator use increase from 44 to 418

State officials hope the numbers will peak soon, but DeWine said it is difficult to model what’s ahead.

“Those are just very, very difficult numbers, and behind each number, of course, is an individual,” DeWine said. 

Earlier Wednesday, officials in Hamilton County held a press conference to warn residents that COVID-19 has once again become a serious danger in the region. 

Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman said Cincinnati-area hospitals are seeing high volumes of patients in their 50s and 60s, a shift from previous months when most cases were among those 70 and older. 

“We continue to see the rate of those ending up within the hospital climb at really an unprecedented rate,” he said. “We're definitely heading in the wrong direction right now. We have not yet peaked — we have a ways to go."

Cincinnati Children’s Chief of Staff Dr. Patty Manning reported a “dramatic increase” both in children testing positive and requiring hospitalization. 

The child-hospitalization numbers in the region are approaching the levels from the peak months last winter, and this time around, hospitals are much busier with non-COVID patients as well, she said. 

“Our entire pediatric health care system is under stress and strain right now. By that, I mean our emergency rooms, our urgent cares, our primary care practices and our community physicians are seeing some of the highest volumes of patients that they ever see. Our testing capacity — everything is under stress and strain,” she said. 

In Cuyahoga County, officials shared a similar message on Wednesday, warning during a news conference that the rising numbers could present significant disruption and strain hospitals in the coming days and weeks.

“Now, I know this sounds like a broken record, but COVID is getting worse,” Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish said. “The more our numbers rise, the higher the possibility that school might have to go remote again. It's not just schools — businesses, restaurants, concerts, nightlife — all these things are again going to be effected if our positive cases don't start going down.”

Cuyahoga County Health Commissioner Terry Allan said he fears that a surge in COVID-19 deaths is around the corner. 

“Sadly, we are also bracing for increases in fatalities that may follow increases in hospitalizations, intensive-care bed use and ventilator use,” he said. 

As of the latest update Tuesday, Ohio reported 137 weekly COVID-19 deaths, an increase from 81 last week and 68 two weeks ago. 

As COVID-19 impacts the return to classrooms for Ohio students, several schools have been forced to halt in-person learning due to rising COVID-19 numbers. DeWine said this could be avoided if school districts adopted mask mandates. 

“If they had had a mask mandate, most of those schools, it would only have been a fraction of those kids who would, in fact, be out,” he said. 

The governor said without either vaccinations or masks, districts will continue to face challenges keeping their students in school. 

“If we don't do one of those two things, we've already seen this week and last week, how hard it's going to be to keep our schools open,” he said. 

Ohio Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff held a conference call Wednesday with representatives of schools in Warren County to discuss a pilot program that would allow schools to quarantine fewer students if they conducted testing, DeWine said. 

If an unmasked, unvaccinated student is exposed at school, they could avoid quarantine if they get tested and mask up. The governor said Ohio has a sufficient supply of rapid tests to deploy to schools for this purpose.

“If this is successful in this trial that we're going to have with the Warren County school systems, this will be something that we would hope to be able to roll out and make available for other schools around the state of Ohio,” he said.