Indoor Mask Advisory Issued In Cleveland

CLEVELAND — Mayor Justin Bibb issued an indoor mask advisory for the city of Cleveland on Friday. The advisory is effective immediately and will remain in place through at least the end of January.

The advisory was announced in a short post on the city's Facebook page. The city added,"Wear a mask and get vaccinated or boosted today."

While there are encouraging signs that northern Ohio's COVID-19 spike has peaked and is now beginning to slow, the region's omicron-fueled surge is still straining hospitals and businesses.

Greater Cleveland was one of the first regions in the nation to see an omicron-fueled surge, with record-breaking numbers of new cases and hospitalizations developing between late November and mid-January.

Over the past week, the region's COVID-19 positivity rate has been sliced in half, falling from 34 percent to 17 percent, meaning fewer COVID-19 tests are coming back positive in Cuyahoga County, according to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.

COVID-19 hospitalizations fell 24 percent in the Cleveland-area last week, according to Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the Ohio Department of Health.

Hospitals aren't in the clear yet though, according to Dr. Alice Kim, director of medical operations at the Cleveland Clinic. There are still high-numbers of COVID-19 patients occupying hospital beds, staffing shortages to contend with and other illnesses beginning to rear their heads.

"We're still in the thick of it, in terms of case numbers, even though there are encouraging indicators that we are headed in a more favorable direction," Vanderhoff said. "We're still looking at numbers that are north of what we saw during our peak surge in 2020. We still have a long way to go."