ODH Director: ‘COVID-19 is not going away’

A record 1 in every 46 Ohioans was diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past two weeks, with the Ohio Department of Health's director saying the virus “will be a part of our health care landscape for the foreseeable future” (Source: “Record number of Ohioans contract COVID-19,” Youngstown Vindicator, Jan. 21).

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, head of ODH, said Thursday despite “signs of improvement in some of Ohio’s first and hardest-hit areas of this historic and record-shattering surge of COVID-19 cases,” people shouldn’t “breathe such a sigh of relief that they think this is entirely over. We’re still dealing with this surge. COVID-19 is not going away.”

It was the sixth consecutive week that Ohio hit a record high number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents.