On December 7, Governor Mike DeWine discussed the Ohio Department of Health aligning its current case definition of antigen testing with the Center of Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) definition. In August, the CDC changed the case definition of antigen testing to include case counts without additional verification. Ohio has continued to manually verify an epidemiological link, such as a known positive contact, with an antigen positive test result.
As of December 8, ODH will begin including antigen tests without an epidemiological link in the total case count. This will result in a one-day spike in reported cases from pending positive antigen cases.
“After understanding more about the antigen testing, the CDC changed their definition. Our epidemiologists have alerted us that they are no longer able to keep up with the manual verification process of antigen testing because there is so much COVID-19 spread in Ohio,” said Gov. DeWine. “Antigen tests have become a bigger part of our overall picture of understanding COVID-19, and it’s important to capture that information.”
Not all pending cases will be translated into new cases. Cases will be checked and duplicate records will be removed. Cases will also be assigned to their appropriate onset date.