Since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed on March 9, there have been nearly 580,000 cases identified in the state, with the number of cases continuing to jump by thousands each day. Early in the pandemic, it appeared that the novel coronavirus mostly impacted older adults. But Community Solutions’ analysis of Ohio’s COVID-19 Dashboard data shows that there are more COVID-19 cases among Ohioans in their 20s than any other age group – and it’s been that way since July.
The data shows the date of illness onset for confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases in Ohio from the beginning of the pandemic through November 30, based on data downloaded on December 11. It doesn’t capture the more than 105,000 cases which were added in the last two weeks alone.
This analysis is only possible because the Ohio Department of Health made an unprecedented amount of COVID-19 case data available to the public, complete with daily updates. Researchers like those of us at Community Solutions can use the information to track the progress of the disease and examine trends in real-time. The Ohio Department of Health has continued to improve its dashboards throughout the pandemic, including adding information about race and ethnicity, cases in school districts, and with the introduction of the vaccine program dashboard just this week. Ohio’s COVID-19 dashboard has become the gold standard for real-time, publicly accessible data on community conditions. The more data we have, the better able we are to understand issues impacting our communities and target responses accordingly.
The full database can be downloaded from: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/overview/
