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'This is trending in the wrong direction' | Ohio Department of Health warns of rough winter if COVID numbers don't improve

Since January, just 2.5 percent of COVID hospital patients are fully vaccinated.

TOLEDO, Ohio — The amount of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and ICU patients in Ohio continue to rise, and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said Thursday we could be in for another rough winter.

More than 2,500 Ohioans are now hospitalized with COVID, and 1 in 5 ICU beds are occupied by a COVID patient. The numbers are worse in rural areas where COVID patients account for 33% of ICU beds and 25% of all hospital patients.

"This is trending in the wrong direction," Vanderhoff said during a news conference. "Unvaccinated Ohioans are far and away the patients filling our hospital beds. From January to present, less than 2.5% were fully vaccinated. This is a hospital pandemic of the unvaccinated."

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The state is reporting 4,000-5,000 new cases per day, which Vanderhoff said compares to last year's winter surge and is 10 times worse than case counts as recently as July of this year. Vanderhoff again asked all Ohioans to get vaccinated and wear a mask when appropriate, but carefully answered a question about whether mandating either would get Ohio out of this pandemic.

"At the end of the day, democracy depends on the will of the people," he said. "What we need to do to get through this ... there are ways to protect ourselves, our schools and communities. That begins with vaccination and wearing a mask. Our guidance relies on the people to get behind it."

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Vanderhoff said the current surge brought on by the delta variant makes getting vaccinated even more important because of the "serious impact" it's having on hospitals.

"Hospitals don't admit people unless they're very sick," Vanderhoff said. "All of these people are very seriously ill and some of them will die. Nearly all of them are unvaccinated. What will this look like in December and January? We have to ask ourselves, if we're unvaccinated, 'Do we want to take that chance?'"

A stark difference from a year ago is children not only becoming infected with COVID, but becoming sicker.

FULL NEWS CONFERENCE

Dr. Hector Wong, an ICU physician and head of critical care at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, joined the call Thursday. He suspects delta is to blame for a rise in complications among otherwise healthy children.

"A year ago kids were starting to get infected, but they weren't getting sick," Wong said. "Now we're seeing kids in the hospital, including the ICU, because of COVID with things like respiratory failure. Clearly what we said a year ago we can no longer say in terms of kids not getting sick from COVID."

Wong said children's hospitals across the country are reporting a rise in kids being hospitalized. He declined to give an age range of patients he's seeing in Cincinnati.

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