The state had the fewest new COVID-19 cases reported for a week in more than four months.

The week ending Saturday had 13,848 new cases reported and has seen a decline in COVID-19 cases for the past seven straight weeks.

It’s the fewest number of new COVID-19 cases in a week in Ohio since the week of Oct. 11 to 17, when 12,767 cases were reported.

Reported COVID-19 cases have declined every week for the past seven weeks with this past week having about one-quarter the number of cases reported during the week of Jan. 3, which had 56,304.

There were 14,765 new COVID-19 cases during the week of Feb. 14 and 19,462 during the week of Feb. 7.

Ohio will finish this month today with the lowest number of new COVID-19 cases since October.

The state had 70,362 reported cases as of Saturday. The monthly number hasn’t been that low since October with 61,710 reported COVID-19 cases.

As of Saturday, there were nine days with the state reporting fewer than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases. Before this month, the last date with fewer than 2,000 new cases was Oct. 19 with 1,837.

The state reported 1,774 new COVID-19 cases Saturday, below the daily average of 2,289 during the past 21 days, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

That daily average a month ago was 6,451 cases.

Overall, the state had 966,154 COVID-19 cases with 907,410 presumed recovered and 17,237 deaths as of Saturday, according to the ODH.

That includes 54 new deaths reported Saturday with one each in Trumbull and Mahoning counties.

Mahoning County had 19,373 total cases as of Saturday with 18,050 presumed recovered and 541 deaths, according to the ODH.

Trumbull County had 14,270 total COVID-19 cases as of Saturday with 13,193 presumed recovered and 461 fatalities, according to the ODH.

Columbiana County had 8,094 total COVID-19 cases as of Saturday with 7,576 presumed recovered and 182 deaths, according to the ODH. The Columbiana County Health District, however, reported 188 COVID-19 fatalities in the county.

VACCINATIONS

The ODH listed 1,620,452 people, 13.86 percent of the state’s population, receiving the first of the two-dose vaccine as of 6 a.m. Saturday, including 46,530 in the previous 24 hours.

Vaccination numbers have greatly increased in February in Ohio with 766,487 people getting at least the first inoculation this month. That’s 47.3 percent of all the vaccinations in the state, which received the first shipment of doses Dec. 14.

In Mahoning County, 16.39 percent of the population (37,482 people) had received at least the first dose compared with 14.52 percent in Trumbull County (28,742 people) and 13.81 percent in Columbiana County (14,067 people) as of 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the ODH.

A total of 861,051 people, 7.37 percent of the state’s population, received both vaccine doses as of 6 a.m. Saturday, including 46,530 in the prior 24 hours.

In Mahoning County, 7.96 percent of the population (18,212 people) had received both doses while 7.33 percent of the population in Trumbull (14,518 people) and 6.07 percent of the population in Columbiana (6,185 people) had both doses as of 6 a.m. Saturday.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com