COLUMBUS — Under direction from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ohio officials said on Friday that they have expanded who they will count as a coronavirus case beyond just those with a lab test to back it up.
But Gov. Mike DeWine, already faced with some doubts as to the state’s modeling predictions, said the state will also continue to report just those who test positive so that Ohioans can compare apples to apples to monitor the state’s progress in dampening the disease’s spread.
Speaking during a news conference, at least the governor did not have to compete this time with protesters demanding that he lift restrictions on Ohio businesses and citizens that he credits with taming infections. Such protests occurred on Thursday at the Statehouse while Mr. DeWine delivered his remarks, which have been watched daily by countless residents of the Buckeye State.
The adjustment occurred days after Ohio dramatically lowered its projections for how bad the peak of infections could be in coming weeks. It now predicts a peak roughly around April 19 of 1,607 new cases a day, down from as many as 10,000.
While the number of new cases, even under the old definition, continues to climb by several hundred each day, that is still about a fourth of that expected number of 1,607.
As of Friday, the total confirmed cases was up to 5,878, an increase of 6.6 percent day to day. That includes 42 cases that would not have been counted under the old system.
Total hospitalizations were 1,755, an increase of 8.8 percent. A total of 231 deaths were attributed to the virus, up 8.4 percent over the previous day. The number of deaths includes four who were counted only because of the expanded definition.
Numbers provided by Lucas County public health officials — which have not always lined up with the state department of health’s figures for the county — also continued to increase Friday.
Lucas County continues to be one of the hardest-hit locations in the state, and certainly the epicenter of the virus in northwest Ohio. Twenty-two people have died from confirmed cases of the virus here, and the overall number of confirmed cases has climbed to 443.
Also on Friday, local officials for the first time provided some insight into how the hospitals in the region are managing during the pandemic.
Northwest Ohio hospitals are operating at about half capacity or better, according to information released by the Northwest Ohio Emergency Management Coalition. The 18-county northwest Ohio region’s collective cases and hospitalizations as of Friday, in addition to all other noncoronavirus hospitalizations, currently command about 55 percent of the area’s available beds and 39 percent of available ventilators, Julie McKinnon, a spokesman for the coalition, said.
Ms. McKinnon did not provide figures detailing how many hospital beds or ventilators make up those two pools.
The coalition is tasked with keeping inventory of ventilators and bed space for northwest Ohio’s 32 hospitals as directed by Governor DeWine at the end of March, when he divided the state into eight Hospital Preparedness Regions. Lucas County is in Region 1.
At the time, Mr. DeWine was calling for hospitals to double, or even triple, their capacity to accommodate the coronavirus patients predicted in early modeling.
Much of the initial bed space was freed up when the state postponed all elective surgeries, Ms. McKinnon said.
Despite early reports that Michigan hospitals may already be at capacity with the state’s reported 21,504 coronavirus cases, no infected patients have been transferred from Michigan to northwest Ohio hospitals for treatment, she added.
Among other things, the state’s new expanded coronavirus count will include those that a new, quick blood serum test shows have antibodies to the disease, indicating they’ve already been exposed and recovered.
That test is not readily available yet in Ohio, but Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s health director, said that information will be critical in determining when Ohio can emerge from its current pandemic lockdown.
“This enables us to better track who has the virus and who had the virus — those who recovered and are no longer a threat in passing the virus along,” Mr. DeWine said.
He also said the new CDC guidance will allow the state to better target its resources.
The new number will also define a case as someone for whom there is clinical or epidemiological evidence of the presence of coronavirus and there’s no other likely diagnosis, the governor said. This would include, for instance, nursing home residents who show symptoms, haven’t been tested, but are assumed to be infected because other patients in the home have it.
“Eighty percent or more [of cases] are not being tested,” Dr. Acton said. “Most of the cases out there are outpatients being diagnosed clinically based on their symptoms, and they’re staying at home.”
Currently, the governor’s orders closing schools, shutting down nonessential businesses, and requiring Ohioans to stay home are set to expire on May 1.
The governor and Dr. Acton said there are specific things they are looking for as signs that it may be time to at least gradually start lifting the restrictions and put Ohioans back on a path to normalcy.
They are looking for far greater access to testing to see who has already recovered from the disease and now have some immunity so they can go back to work. They want to see consistent trends in the numbers showing new infections and hospitalizations on a decline as they wait for access to better treatments like donated plasma from recovered patients containing antibodies.
One drawback to the state’s apparent success is that most of its population has not been exposed to the coronavirus and remains susceptible.
Also, Dr. Acton made an urgent plea to doctors not to prevent legitimate surgeries from being done in overreaction to the governor’s order prohibiting nonessential procedures in order to reduce coronavirus exposure and preserve scarce personal protection equipment for health-care professionals on the front lines of the pandemic.
She said if a patient is in great pain or the patient’s condition is worsening, doctors should proceed with surgeries and treat them as essential.
Staff writer Tom Troy contributed to this report.
First Published April 10, 2020, 7:24 p.m.