Responding to talk on a Fox News show that some COVID-19 cases are being counted multiple times, including in Mahoning County, the Mahoning County Public Health District said that’s a “false” claim.

On Fox’s “Ingraham Angle” Wednesday night, Phil Kerpen, president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, contended that a person who is at least 80 years old was tested 15 times — with each test counted as separate positive cases.

Kerpen’s group helped to organize protests in April against lockdowns as a result of the pandemic.

The county public health district responded Thursday: “The data is being read incorrectly. In this incident, 15 people around the same age (80-plus) were tested on the same day and were all confirmed positive, for example, mass testing conducted in a nursing home. It is only one line item in the data file in the Ohio Department of Health coronavirus website because ODH is trying to condense the size of the file to make it easier to read. It is not one person being counted 15 times.”

The county district also said the Ohio Disease Reporting System is “a person-based system and not a test-based system. If a person gets tested for COVID-19 and tests positive multiple times, each test is recorded within a person’s individual record that is exclusive to that individual. The ODRS system is designed to flag duplicate entries and any duplicate entries are corrected.”

The case counts are based on a person’s record “regardless of how many times that individual has tested positive for COVID-19,” the district added.

FACE MASKS

The face mask mandate that took effect last week in Trumbull County because it was at Level 3 (red) as a high-risk area is lifted, but Gov. Mike DeWine urged people to still wear them.

Trumbull dropped Thursday to Level 2 (orange) because the number of weekly new COVID-19 cases per capita dropped below the marker of more than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks.

“After two weeks as a red county, Trumbull County is moving down to orange because we’ve seen a reduction of cases here,” DeWine said. “While new cases are still happening, the rate of these cases has decreased. We hope those in this county will continue to wear masks.”

The mask mandate for counties in Level 3 took effect July 8.

To reach Level 3, a county must have four to five of seven indicators as determined by the Ohio Department of Health. Trumbull had four until Thursday.

Trumbull had 47.3 cases per 100,000 residents between June 24 and 30, but that dropped to 14.6 cases between July 1 and 7 for a total of 61.9 cases over the two weeks, according to the Ohio Department of Health. It was at 51.4 cases per 100,000 between June 17 and 23.

The county didn’t reach more than the 35.4 cases per 100,000 residents between July 8 and Wednesday, dropping at least one indicator without adding a new one.

The ODH didn’t respond to a request Thursday to disclose how many cases per 100,000 residents Trumbull County had between July 8 and Wednesday.

LEVELS

The state doesn’t provide information about counties below Level 3 to provide a warning to those living there that a mandate could be issued, so it isn’t known what indicators those counties have. ODH has failed to provide that information despite numerous requests.

Those in Level 2 have two or three of the seven indicators.

Mahoning County has stayed at Level 2 since the system was put in place July 2 while Columbiana County has remained at Level 1 — meaning it has none or one indicator — as it had since July 2.

When the system was put in place July 2, seven counties were at Level 3. Last week, 12 were there and on Thursday that increased to 19.

DeWine said that means 60 percent of the state’s population will be under a mask order starting at 6 p.m. today.

Despite the huge increase, DeWine said he was “cautiously optimistic” the state “is moving in the right direction.”

DeWine said he isn’t prepared to issue a mask mandate — though 25 other states have them — but he didn’t completely rule it out in the future.

NINTH DAY

The number of straight days in Ohio with at least 1,100 newly reported COVID-19 cases stretched into its ninth day.

There were 1,290 cases reported Thursday. That’s the eighth-most for a single day in Ohio since the start of the pandemic.

The last nine days are among the top 12 for reported COVID-19 cases in the state.

Thursday was a decline of 26 cases from Wednesday’s 1,316 reported cases.

July 10 had the most reported for a single day with 1,525.

The state has reported 6,387 cases during the first five days of the week — more than any full week except for the last two.

The daily case average for the first five days of this week is 1,277.4. That’s higher than last week’s 1,147.3 daily case average, when the state set a record for most weekly cases with 8,031.

Overall, there are 70,601 total COVID-19 cases in the state with 48,330 “presumed recovered” and 3,103 fatalities from the virus.

The Ohio Department of Health reported 28 additional deaths Thursday. That’s almost twice as many as the daily average of 16 for the previous 21 days.