Ohio will begin releasing weekly data on coronavirus positivity rates by county
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Department of Health on Monday will begin publishing coronavirus positivity rates by county, based on a person’s county of residence, to the state’s COVID-19 data website.
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, Ohio’s chief medical officer, said Friday in announcing the new information that the change is in response to requests from local health departments for better localized data that could be used in making decisions on how to respond to the spread of the virus.
Vanderhoff said it took several months to put together a reliable system to report this information because of the goal to report it based on county of residence, rather than where the tests were conducted. He said the state is working directly with the labs to obtain the information in a timely manner.
Updates will be posted each Monday, with a color-coded map of Ohio’s 88 counties and an option to see more details by hovering over individual counties.
Tracking positivity rates, however, does come with a caveat. They don’t represent a random sampling preferred in scientific studies, but rather are the result of who chooses to get tests or are required to do so. For example, some healthy people get tests ahead of vacations or business trips, and both professional and college athletes have undergone extensive testing.
“Don’t look at these numbers in isolation,” Vanderhoff said. “This is one set of numbers that should be considered in the context of a broader set of numbers.
“As long as we consider this in a larger context, it is very important, very useful, very valuable.. … But, we have to be careful when we look at data points that at the end of the day do have a certain degree of sampling bias.”
The state already reports cases, hospitalizations, deaths and other information at the county level.
Fewer than 1-in-20 Ohio coronavirus tests have been coming back positive, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The rate was most recently reported at 4.1% for Wednesday.
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