May 18, 2020

Several readers have recently commented on how the change in day-to-day infections in most counties is small. So starting today, we will produce a week-to week comparison of infections for Monday and and another week-to week comparison of fatalities at the end of the week. We will continue to include a second report that covers another area of interest in these twice weekly reports. Please let us know what aspect of the pandemic you are most interested in, and we will do our best to obtain data and cover the topic.

For today's report we looked at how Ohio performed in comparison to the U.S. as a whole in deploying COVID-19 testing. While this is a complicated area and there are a number of different potential measures, our cursory analysis shows that Ohio's rate of increased testing was slightly better than the national average. 

A comparison of infections for 5-11 and 5-18 shows that statewide infections increased by 14.7 percent for the seven day period. Several counties in the Southeast, most notably Hocking, experienced growth rates that dramatically exceeded state averages. This is consistent with national reports that suggest slowing growth rates in urban communities and upticks in rural areas that have been previously less affected.