COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio Department of Health is now estimating a January onset of coronavirus symptoms for at least 13 cases in eight counties, evidence that the virus arrived earlier and more widely than originally could be confirmed.
Two weeks ago, on May 11, Dr. Amy Acton, director of the health department, first discussed five cases the state had identified going back to January - moving the earliest estimates up by weeks and well ahead of the confirmation of the first cases on March 9.
“We can pick them up because of the antibody testing,” Acton said. “We will learn more and more about the disease. How long it was here in Ohio. How long it was spreading as we do more and more testing.”
The number of January cases periodically has been added to the state’s daily reports since then, reaching 13 on Thursday.
The estimated onset date of the first case is now listed as Jan. 2, a case involving a Warren County woman in her 40s. It’s one of three Warren County cases dating back to January. The others had estimated onsets of Jan. 19 and Jan. 27.
There are also three January cases for Montgomery County (Jan. 13, 15 and 30), two for Miami County (Jan. 7 and 26), and one each in Lake (Jan. 15), Richland (Jan. 18), Summit (Jan. 20), Union (Jan. 25) and Wood (Jan. 27) counties.
None of the January cases resulted in death or hospitalization, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
The 33,915 reported cases break down this way for onset of symptoms: January (13), February (55), March (5,300), April (16,503) and May (12,044). May numbers likely are understated because it often takes days to learn about cases.
Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.
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