By: Staff, Mahoning Matters
The Ohio Department of Health plans to begin randomly testing Ohio’s population for the coronavirus, which will help to determine the spread of COVID-19 is within the state.
Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton announced the effort during Saturday’s daily briefing. She said the state is assembling a team of epidemiologists who will start the testing with a random sample of 100 people who are not experiencing coronavirus symptoms. This testing is intended to collect information from a sample of the population and use results to model how much of the general population has coronavirus.
“We’re trying to get a better sense of who’s out there, what’s going on in the general population,” Acton said.
It’s been difficult for health officials to estimate the number of Ohioans who have COVID-19 because of a lack of widespread testing. Confirmed cases reached 3,739, only a fraction of the number state officials expect to reach before the pandemic reaches its peak in Ohio. About 42,000 people have been tested so far.
Acton didn’t give details as to the timing of this random study.
This action comes as Ohio marks more than 1,000 hospitalized for COVID-19 and more than 100 reported coronavirus deaths. More information about the cases is hard to come by, as state officials have declined to give much more information on the cases, in particular more precise locations of the cases.
