With just two days left in February, this will be the month with the least reported COVID-19 cases in Ohio since October.

The state had 68,588 cases reported for the month as of Friday, an average of 2,638 daily cases. If that average remains for today and Sunday, Ohio could end February with 73,864 cases.

The monthly number hasn’t been that low since October with 61,710 reported cases.

Since then, the number of reported COVID-19 cases jumped to 205,366 in November, a record 279,317 in December and down to 195,412 last month.

However, Ohio still has a long way to go to get to monthly numbers from early in the pandemic, which started in mid-March 2020. The number of cases in April, May and June were all below 18,000.

But Gov. Mike DeWine is continuing to reopen the state. The latest is his decision to allow 30 percent maximum outdoor capacity and 25 percent indoor capacity for sporting and entertainment events.

The state reported 1,976 new COVID-19 cases Friday, below the daily average of 2,374 during the past 21 days, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

Overall, the state had 964,380 COVID-19 cases with 904,270 presumed recovered and 17,183 deaths as of Friday.

That includes 58 new deaths reported Friday with two each in Trumbull and Columbiana counties, according to the ODH.

Mahoning County had 19,348 total cases as of Friday with 17,992 presumed recovered and 540 deaths, according to the ODH.

The state reported 14,239 total COVID-19 cases in Trumbull County as of Friday with 13,150 presumed recovered and 460 fatalities.

Columbiana County had 8,086 total COVID-19 cases as of Friday with 7,548 presumed recovered and 182 deaths, according to the ODH. However, the Columbiana County Health District reported 188 COVID-19 fatalities in the county.

VACCINATIONS

The ODH reported 1,573,435 people, 13.46 percent of the state’s population, had received the first of the two-dose vaccine as of 6 a.m. Friday, including 42,853 in the previous 24 hours.

In Mahoning County, 16 percent of the population (36,590 people) had received at least the first dose compared to 13.71 percent in Trumbull County (27,138 people) and 13.45 percent in Columbiana County (13,700 people) as of 6 a.m. Friday, according to the ODH.

There were 813,569 people, 6.96 percent of the state’s population, receiving both inoculations as of 6 a.m. Friday, including 41,319 in the prior 24 hours.

In Mahoning County, 7.77 percent of the population (17,768 people) had received both doses while 7 percent of the population in Trumbull (13,867 people) and 5.86 percent of the population in Columbiana (5,975 people) had both doses as of Friday.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com