Cuyahoga County is experiencing higher-than-average hospitalization rates for COVID, flu, and RSV, according to a recent report from the Cuyahoga County Board of Health. The county’s hospitalization rates for these illnesses are 93.53 per 100,000 for COVID, 111.16 for flu, and 82.06 for RSV, exceeding the state averages.

Local Health Officials Respond

Board members discussed possible contributing factors, including vaccination gaps and undertesting. They also called for more demographic analysis and suggested scaling up existing tools like the RSV toolkit, vaccination, and handwashing campaigns as potential improvement strategies.

A CCBH staff member proposed a Happy Handwashing campaign or surveillance programs at daycares to address the issue. Board Member Dr. Sherrie Dixon Williams emphasized the need for the county to take the lead in addressing the problem, saying, ‘We, Cuyahoga County, should be trailblazing… doing better than the others in terms of assessing what happened, getting the demographics and… doing our campaigns so that they are looking to us to say, ‘How did you do it?’ ‘

Original reporting: Signal Cleveland — read the source article.