An increase in COVID-19 cases calls for a statewide cry for help from the Ohio Department of Health.

Coronavirus numbers have more than doubled our 21 day average with 785 new cases in the last 24 hours.

Doctors fear that at this rate, an even worse variant will surface.


"We are one variant away from this being worse for kids," said Patty Manning-Courtney, MD. pediatrician and chief of staff at Cincinnati Children's Hospital." And is that what we're gonna do? We're gonna wait until it is worse for kids and then we might take it seriously and get vaccinated," she said.


Doctors say parents are concerned about vaccinating their children 12 and up right now, but the only way to protect them is with a vaccine.

For the children ages 11 and under, it's safest for the adults around them to be vaccinated so the children won't carry and spread the virus.


"You have to vaccinate the adults to keep the kids safe," said Amy Edwards, MD. aossicate medical director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. "You can look at other states to see where we're headed. I mean, you look at Mississippi they've got a record number of kids in the ICU, you look at Arkansas, their pediatric hospitalizations are going up. Ohio we do not want to follow in their footsteps," she said.


To combat vaccine hesistency, doctors have conducted vaccine trials with groups of individuals, both children and adults, one to receive the vaccine and another, placebos. Then they watch for side effects and the development of COVID-19.


"We've seen through those trials that children are remarkably and wonderfully responsive to these vaccines. They're very well protected and they have had very minimal side effects," said Courtney.


Local vaccination rates to date in the Valley clock in Mahoning County at 47 percent, Trumbull County at 44 percent and Columbiana County at 37 percent.

Doctors tell 21 News we are now in a pandemic of the unvaccinated.


"COVID-19 isn't gone. We need to remain vigilant and the best protection we have is the vaccine," said Bruce Vanderhoff, MD, chief medical officer at the Ohio Department of Health. "You only have two choices left. either you get vaccinated or you are going to get COVID-19," he said.


"We'll learn the hard way, I'm afraid, that COVID can actually be even worse for kids than it already is because a variant will come along that will be worse," said Courtney.


Medical officials are hoping the FDA will completely approve vaccines by mid-winter.