Gov. Mike DeWine issued a 21-day curfew in Ohio during his Tuesday coronavirus briefing. The curfew will begin on Thursday evening, and goes from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. Retail establishments need to be closed and people need to be at home during the curfew period, the governor said.
“We literally have to build a bridge to get from here to the point when we're going to have the immunity from the vaccine,” he said. “We got to get over this bad, bad spot.”
The Ohio Department of Health on Tuesday reported 7,079 new COVID-19 cases and 368 new COVID-19 hospitalizations in the last 24 hours. Ohio currently has 3,648 hospitalized confirmed-COVID-19 patients. Hospitalizations have gone up dramatically and COVID-positive ICU patients have nearly tripled since a month ago, DeWine said.
Every county in Ohio is at least twice the high incidence level set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the governor said. The state’s 7-day average positivity rate is 12.8%.
“The bad news is that our situation in Ohio is deteriorating,” DeWine said. “We see more and more cases, more and more people in the hospital. And we've got to turn this thing around."
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