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The slow, steady drop of COVID-19 cases at area nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and prisons continued this week, even reaching zeroes at all three area prisons.
Area prisons reported four cases last week.
Even the number of cases at Mahoning County nursing homes dropped significantly this week -- from 17 to 12 -- two weeks after Mahoning County Public Health officials contacted the facilities and asked they eliminate old COVID-19 cases that no longer should remain on their list. The number of cases dropped last week from 33 cases to 17.
The 12 cases this week consisted of three patients and nine staff members. Because the same number of cases continues to be reported for some of the facilities for several weeks, they most likely no longer are actual cases, a Mahoning County Public Health official said recently. One Boardman facility this week continued to report one patient case and two staff cases. They are the same numbers the facility has had for quite a few weeks.
One Columbiana County nursing home had one staff case of the virus this week after that county went several weeks without any cases. Trumbull County nursing homes had no cases this week.
The whole state prison system has only 11 current COVID-19 cases -- seven among staff and four among inmates. The state's nursing homes currently have 68 patient cases and 78 staff cases. By comparison, nursing homes have had 51,344 patient cases since the spring of 2020 and 38,196 staff cases.
Since March 2020, 7,572 people living or working in Ohio nursing homes have died from COVID-19, according to the latest data from the Ohio Department of Health.
Locally, Mahoning County nursing homes reported one more COVID-19 death this week, bringing Mahoning County's total to 281. The numbers remained the same for Trumbull County (157) and Columbiana County (79).
One reason for tracking nursing home COVID-19 cases is that officials decided in the spring of 2020 to report those numbers to the public weekly, including the names of the nursing homes with high numbers of cases.
The reason was because such a high percentage of the cases were coming from nursing homes. For example, in May 2020, deaths at Mahoning County long-term care facilities made up 69 percent of all Mahoning County coronavirus deaths at the time, Mahoning County Public Health reported.
Current ODH statistics show 46.7 percent of all Mahoning County COVID-19 deaths have been connected to long-term care facilities such as nursing homes.
The figure is 32.5 percent for Trumbull County, 34.4 percent for Columbiana County and 37.5 percent across the state.
erunyan@vindy.com