COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio Governor Mike DeWine held a briefing on Thursday afternoon regarding he and his wife's exposure to COVID, as well as where Ohio currently stands during the pandemic.

DeWine says that for the past several weeks, cases have been going down in Ohio, citing more adults choosing to get vaccinated, as well as the Pfizer vaccine being approved for children aged 5-11.

However, DeWine went on to state that Ohio is "still at a high level" stating that even the counties with the lowest percentage of COVID cases are still two times above what the CDC would consider "high incidence community spread." Ohio's statewide average has dropped a lot, but is still at around 3.5 times above high incidence level.

In addition, as of Wednesday, over 2,300 Ohioans are in the hospital with COVID with almost 29% in the ICU with two thirds of ICU patients being on ventilators.

However, DeWine assured Ohioans that numbers have been dropping and are expected to continue to drop, stating that vaccine numbers in Ohio continue to go up.

"It's good news that we now have almost 65% of our population age 12 and over vaccinated. And now 67% of those 18 years and above who are vaccinated," DeWine said.

"Each day in Ohio, we're now averaging about 5,000 new people who choose to get their first vaccination ... So that means every day 5,000 people who had for whatever reason  not gotten their vaccine so far chose to get the vaccine, so I think we need to celebrate that. I think it is a very positive thing," he said.

DeWine says he and his wife will still be testing for COVID regularly and monitoring their symptoms as well as the symptoms of those they were in close contact with during exposure.