Ashtabula County is now 84th in the nation out of all three thousand one hundred and forty three counties in the United States for hospital admissions due to COVID-19 over the last week. Our vaccine uptake is abysmal compared to other areas. With BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 taking off it seems like winter will be nasty.

In terms of hospital admissions last week the top six counties are all northeastern Ohio counties. Starting from Ashtabula as number six you then have Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Mahoning, and Trumbull. I know people claim we’re in a post-COVID age but even with the resources of University Hospitals of Cleveland and the Cleveland Clinic locally we’re still in not so great shape.

Ashtabula County had its “red sweep” at the polls on Election Day. The correlation between outcomes like that and vaccine refusal is disturbing. Unfortunately there are consequences and we may not be able to dodge them this time.