Belmont County Deputy Health Director Robert Sproul is seeing the same COVID decline as other local counties Photo Provided

CADIZ — After seeing the highest COVID-19 count in any month so far in January, health officials are now reporting a “drastic” decline in new cases.

COVID-related and hospitalizations are dropping as well.

Harrison County Health Administrator Garen Rhome said Wednesday that cases there in January reached 659, eclipsing the previous monthly record by more than 200 cases.

Rhome said the department had never confirmed more than 400 in any other month.

But now, Rhome said, only three new cases have been reported since last week, when just 39 were recorded. As many as 200 cases were reported in a single week in January.

Belmont County Deputy Health Commissioner Robert Sproul said the active case count in his is just over 1,400, down from more than 3,500 last month. Sproul said the decline could be attributed to a combination of vaccinations and the recent omicron variant that spread rapidly being weaker than the delta variant that plagued the region a few months ago.

“We had quite a few people vaccinated so they had some immunity,” he explained. “We had a large number of people all of a sudden get infected, so now they’re going to have natural immunity for a little while.”

Sproul said it’s difficult to predict if the trend will continue, but he obviously likes the direction things are going.

“Obviously, a very quick drop off,” Rhome said of the Harrison County decline.

He anticipates that the decline will continue but, like Sproul, said there are no guarantees. He said the situation could change at any moment.

“Our hope is that we’ll see this low daily case numbers continue through spring where we can even get into summer,” Rhome said, noting that last summer saw a very low caseload. He said if the trend would continue with a low case count before summer arrives, it would be a very promising sign.

Rhome said last month over 6,700 Ohioans were hospitalized with the virus. Now the state is looking at just over 2,700 hospital patients with COVID, which shows a drastic decline across the board. He said the state’s Region 8, which includes Belmont, Harrison, Jefferson and Monroe counties, is also trending downward in terms of hospitalizations.

Regarding the omicron variant, one case diagnosed in January finally registered in Harrison County. But Rhome said omicron being officially confirmed was basically irrelevant because health officials knew it already had been in the area.

Sproul agreed, explaining that labs were so overwhelmed that results regarding what type of COVID was detected were not coming through as quickly as just confirming a COIVID infection.

“Now the thing is if we can maintain this downward trajectory and move this thing into the endemic category, keep moving forward,” Sproul said.

Harrison County has lowest percentage of fully vaccinated residents in Eastern Ohio at 44.6 percent. Belmont County has 49.6 percent of its population fully vaccinated, Monroe County stands at 48% and Jefferson County is showing 52 percent of its population fully vaccinated. Monroe County reported 36 new cases since last week and Jefferson County 205.

As far as any new variants on the horizon, that too was hard to predict but Rhome has heard nothing from the Ohio Department of Health and said there are no signs of that at this moment.