Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he was positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, noting the rising levels of the virus throughout the state.
DeWine’s office announced the governor had tested positive Tuesday morning, after experiencing “mild, cold-like symptoms … including sneezing and a runny nose.”
Under the advice of his doctor, DeWine’s office said he has started a round of Paxlovid, an anti-retroviral used to treat COVID-19.
The press release from the governor said the predominant COVID-19 variant going around in the country is KP.3.1.1., in the omicron family of the virus, and cases have been increasing for months, DeWine’s office stated.
“COVID-19 cases and wastewater detections of COVID-19 have been on the rise in Ohio since late June,” DeWine’s office stated in the release. “Though hospitalizations, which are a good indicator of disease severity, have risen modestly in much of the United States, they are not currently rising in Ohio.”
The CDC estimated the KP.3.1.1. variant represented 36.8% of all cases in the U.S. in the two weeks ending Aug. 17.
State data shows a rise in hospitalizations due to COVID, with 238 reports in the last week, and a three-week average of 190. In the last three weeks, hospitalizations have gone from 141 to 192, up to the most recent report of 238.
The Ohio Department of Health said case levels “have not approached those of earlier this year,” for example in January when there were 41,344 cases reported, and “certainly not anywhere near the levels seen during the last major surge” of January 2022, according to a spokesperson for the department.
While the omicron variants are attributed to the recent rise, press secretary Ken Gordon said “there is no evidence that these variants are causing more severe levels of disease.”
“That said, COVID remains a very real health threat, and any increase in cases reaffirms the importance of staying up to date with vaccination,” Gordon wrote in a statement.
When DeWine announced he had tested positive (and then negative) back in August 2020, right before he was set to accompany then-President Donald Trump in Cleveland, reported cases were at a 21-day average of 1,280. DeWine also tested positive for COVID in April 2022 and in September 2023.
According to the most recent reports from the ODH, which releases COVID data once a week, reported cases in the last week were up to 7,347, a number that has steady risen to a three-week average of 6,656 cases.
In November of 2020, months after shutdowns began in the country and DeWine had implemented closures of restaurants and bars but before vaccines were available, the governor had announced additional mask order enforcement and was again debating closing restaurants and other public facilities. On the day he announced further mask enforcement measures, the state saw a new record for COVID cases: 7,101.
Nationally, the CDC reported 18.1% COVID-19 test positivity for the week ending Aug. 10, up from 17.9% the previous week. As of that same week, 1.9% of all deaths in the United States were due to COVID-19, up from 1.6% the week before.
The governor’s office encouraged Ohioans to update their COVID vaccines when they are available this fall, and for those who haven’t been vaccinated or have not received the most recent booster dose to “talk to their health care provider about the current vaccine.”
As of August. 15, less than 12% of Ohioans had updated their COVID-19 vaccine. The CDC recommends everyone six months or older to receive an updated vaccine “to protect against the potentially serious outcomes of COVID-19 this fall and winter whether or not they have ever previously been vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine.”
“To date, hundreds of millions of people have safely received a COVID-19 vaccine under the most intense vaccine safety monitoring in United States history,” the CDC said in a release.
According to the ODH, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could approve an updated vaccine “as soon as this week,” after which the CDC will give specific recommendations.
“It’s reasonable to anticipate the new vaccine may start to be available to the public in September,” the ODH stated.
