ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County’s new COVID-19 cases continue to increase after the state increased the local alert designation Thursday to Level 2, or orange” for the first time in several weeks.

Belmont County Deputy Health Director Robert Sproul reported Friday that the county is now at a total of 843 positive cases since the start of the pandemic. There have been 722 recoveries, and there are now 89 residents isolated at home with active cases. Sproul said seven people are hospitalized. There have been 25 deaths of people who had been infected with the virus in Belmont County, including nine inmates at the Belmont Correctional Institution.

This marks an increase from Thursday’s 835 total infections, with active cases almost doubling since last Friday’s 45. Numbers have been rising across Eastern Ohio, with many nearby counties such as Guernsey and Noble designated Level 3, or red. Ohio has no Level 4, or purple, counties.

Sproul has continually stressed the need to both take precautions and to cooperate with efforts at contact tracing. There have been comparatively few new cases in the county’s school districts since they reopened. Sproul said this is due to the significant precautions they have in place. He also has said the chief source of community spread is likely lack of precautions such as mask wearing and careless social gatherings.

Positive cases have been reported in the Union Local, Martins Ferry, St. Clairsville, Shadyside and Bellaire school districts, but precautions seem to have arrested the spread within the schools.

Staff members and one inmate at the Belmont County Jail tested positive last week, the first cases at the facility since the onset of the pandemic. According to Lt. Stan Galownia at the Belmont County Jail, inmates have been permitted only video visitations since March at the kiosks in the cell blocks.

“We haven’t had physical visitations since Gov. (Mike) DeWine put the original concerns out with the COVID-19, and we’ve been able to allow the inmates visiting per the standards of Ohio,” he said, adding that the jail has had the capacity for video visitation since last year. “Luckily enough, it benefited the inmates of our facility once COVID hit.”

Belmont County Eastern Division Judge David Trouten said the positive inmate had been one of the cases he heard.

“I found out that day only because they had to separate him when they were hearing his case, compared to the other cases,” Trouten said. “We had to do a patch on video of him in a different room with a different system on his case because he was quarantined.”

Prior to the pandemic, jail overcrowding had been an issue, with the 144-capacity facility housing more than 200 inmates. Since the pandemic began, the jail has reduced its population, housing 128 inmates as of Friday.

Trouten said the coronavirus has brought about new and expanded use of technology to hear cases at a distance.

“We don’t let that affect how we sentence people. We’re still going to do justice,” he said. “But obviously it impacts the way we handle court. We don’t make them put them on a transport and take them to court. We’ve made accommodations so that we do a lot of hearings on video. That way the jail doesn’t have to move people around as much. … There’s challenges that you work around.”