LIMA — Allen County saw an increasing number of hospital admissions for COVID-19 illness in July, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a risk advisory urging residents to wear masks in crowded places, regardless of their vaccination status.
While most who contract the virus today are not requiring hospitalization, Mercy Health-Lima President Ronda Lehman on Monday said the hospital’s inpatient volume for COVID-related illness has increased “substantially” compared to one month ago.
The medical center was treating 20 COVID patients as of Monday morning, though Lehman estimated 90% of those patients were not critically ill.
Allen County Public Health also recorded its second-highest case total of the year in July, as 930 positive test results were reported to the health department, a figure which likely undercounts the prevalence of infections now that at-home testing kits are widely available.
The rise in cases and hospitalizations prompted the CDC to elevate its risk advisory for Allen, Auglaize and Van Wert counties to high, during which universal masking is recommended in crowded indoor places.
The agency revised its COVID risk advisory system earlier this year, as more Americans got vaccinated or recovered from the illness, which made the virus less severe for most people. Older adults and those with compromised immune systems or underlying diseases may still develop severe illnesses.
To account for the change, the CDC now looks at positive case rates, new hospital admissions and the proportion of hospital resources dedicated to COVID patients to determine which communities are at highest risk for seeing their hospitals overwhelmed.
Allen County Health Commissioner Brandon Fischer estimated that 75% of residents hospitalized with COVID illness in July were older than 60.
But about 9% of those hospitalized in July were only in their 20s, Fischer said. Allen County Public Health alerted state health authorities in late June after six infants younger than 1 year old were hospitalized with the illness, though the trend appears to have subsided.
Still, Fischer is advising parents that vaccines are now available for children as young as six months old for those who wish to have their kids vaccinated.
The health department has made COVID-19 vaccines available during routine childhood vaccination appointments to make it easier for parents to complete both, but Fischer said the agency doesn’t want to pressure anyone into getting vaccinated.
Instead, he said, “We want to talk through everything and let them make their own informed decision to get whatever vaccine we have available to them.”
