Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Hit Record High Numbers of COVID-19 Cases

As Cuyahoga County and Cleveland hit record-breaking numbers of new COVID-19 cases, this past week, local health officials expect higher hospitalization and death rates to follow in the coming weeks.

“We’ve never hit these numbers. This is an all-time high for us,” said county Health Commissioner Terry Allan.

The county is averaging 130 new cases per day, Allan said. 

For the past two days, the county reported about 170 new COVID-19 cases each day, which is the highest number of new cases in a single day the county has seen, Allan said.

Combined with cases in the city of Cleveland, which collects its COVID-19 data separately from the county, that’s more than 200 cases each day, he said.

In September, the average number of new cases per day was about 50, said Jana Rush, the county’s chief epidemiologist.

The testing positivity rate is also increasing. Statewide, that rate has doubled since early September, Allan said.

In Cuyahoga County, the positivity rate of tests is currently 6.7 percent, up from 5.1 percent last week, Rush said. This is the highest positivity rate the county has seen since July, she said.

There are currently 169 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in local hospitals, said Dr. Robert Wyllie, chief of medical operations at Cleveland Clinic. 

“It’s not affecting us, in terms of hospitalizations, quite yet, like it is the rest of the state,” he said. “Right now, our hospitals are about 75 percent full, so we certainly have capacity.”

There are about 5,000 hospital beds and 1,000 ICU beds available across all the local health systems, Wyllie said.

However, Wyllie pointed out that there are three phases of COVID-19: infection, hospitalization, and fatality, which most often occurs 2 to 3 weeks after a person is first infected. Hospitalization numbers could go up soon as cases are rising, Wyllie said.

“Recognize that the next six to twelve weeks are going to be difficult. They’re going to be challenging. There’s going to be more cases,” he said.

Wyllie expects that a vaccine will become available at the end of November or in December, with distribution starting at the beginning of 2021.

Cuyahoga County was recently on the “watch list” for a level 4 threat, the ‘purple’ category in the state’s public health advisory system. The county is no longer approaching purple, and Allan urged residents not to focus too much on the color-coded system.

“Some of the fluctuation [between color categories] is inevitable,” Allan said, because a certain number of indicators, such as the number of new cases, outpatient visits, and emergency department visits, have to be met for a specific length of time, and those can fluctuate from week to week.

Allan did not say, though, whether the board of health would issue new guidance for schools if the county would go purple, but did say while some cases are being reported from students being inside classrooms, more cases are being traced to after-school activities and sports.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called on localities to form COVID Defense Teams to assess and understand their situation, and communicate with citizens about what needs to happen next, during a news conference Thursday.

Locally, the city of Cleveland’s emergency operations department will work alongside the county’s board of health to carry out these duties, County Executive Armond Budish said.