Healthier Oklahoma Coalition: COVID-19 Cases Are Slowly Trending Downward

As Oklahoma continues to report high numbers of COVID-19 cases fueled by the Omicron variant, trends are slowly moving lower.

"Certainly the last week and a half we've had a steady drop in case count,” said Dr. David Kendrick.

Dr. Kendrick is the CEO of My Health Access Network, a non-profit tracking COVID data in Oklahoma.

He says positivity rates, which is the percentage of tests coming back positive, peaked on January 21st at 41 percent. Now, a week and a half later, it's at 30 percent. 

"So a pretty good drop off,” said Kendrick. “I think you can also tell hopefully by the width of these blue bars, which indicate the amount of testing being done that there's also a decline in the amount of testing that's happening."

Despite the recent drop, case counts are still higher than previous peaks this pandemic and hospital leaders say they continue to feel the surge.

"Last Friday, on January 28th, we saw the most hospitalized patients due to COVID across the last two years,” said Patti Davis, the president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association. “We had 2,243 patients with COVID across Oklahoma."

Since Friday, that number has dropped by more than 220 patients statewide.

It’s a trend she's optimistic will continue but in the meantime, hospitals are busy.

"Let me just say, it's still tight in hospitals,” said Davis. “ICU beds are still a premium. And we know this is not over for our hospitals.”