Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org We close the year with tragic and terrible COVID numbers, and with the first step to end the battle over the map the candidates will use to run for Congress in 2022.

Details on that this weekend.

The State of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio, I'm Karen Kasler.

2021 ends with tens of thousands of sick people and grieving families in Ohio and some truly terrible stats about where we are in a pandemic that started almost two years ago.

That's coming up.

But first this week brought a second round of arguments about gerrymandering to the Ohio Supreme Court in less than a month.

The four Republican and three Democratic justices are being asked to decide if the state's new congressional district map, created by Republicans and approved by Republican state lawmakers on a party line vote in November , is unconstitutional by some of the same groups that have also sued over the new maps for Ohio's State House and Senate districts.

Though the court has been hearing cases in person since September, this sudden addition to the docket was argued, virtually arguing for a group of voters representing Democratic.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's National Redistricting Action Fund and for the League of Women Voters of Ohio was Ben Stafford from the Elias Group, which has challenged Republican drawn maps in several states.

Stafford said expert analysis shows Republicans could win twelve of 15 districts in this new congressional map in violation of a 2018 voter approved constitutional amendment to end the Partizan process for drawing congressional districts.

This case is about how the General Assembly has thumbed its nose at these reforms and enacted a plan that palpably violates Article 19 new anti gerrymandering protections.

Stafford and civil rights lawyer Robert Fram argued that a Partizan map would not have resulted in just using Ohio's geography to create the plan.

Fram said the 80% Republican 20% Democratic result was only achieved through county splits.

When we see a substantial deviation from compactness.

That results in a substantial increase in Partizan gain.

That's a tip off that what we have here is an unduly harsh part favoring of one political party.

Earlier in December, the court removed from the lawsuits the Democrats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Senator Vern Sykes and House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, and also Republican members Auditor Keith Faber and Governor Mike DeWine, who's incidentally, the father of Justice Pat DeWine, who many activists said should have recused himself from the case that left Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Senate President Matt Huffman and Speaker Bob Cupp.

All Republicans arguing for the map they approved was Phillip Strack, a North Carolina lawyer who said map drawing can use partizanship just not excessively.

This case is about a congressional district plan that fully complied with Oracle maintain of the state constitution and was the most constitutionally compliant of all the plans before the General Assembly.

Stracke said the other side's analysis is deeply flawed because of human interference, and that just using geography would also have created a Republican map.

He reiterated Republican leaders claims that this map has six GOP and two Democratic seats with seven competitive districts and only splits twelve counties, just over half the number allowed and two counties Hamilton and Summit twice.

Democratic Justice Melody Stewart asked him about that.

It's almost like you're saying it's not as gerrymandered.

As it could have been.

Your honor, I'm just saying that the Constitution allows five counties to be split twice, and so the General Assembly could legally have done that.

Ohio has had a congressional delegation of twelve Republ and four Democrats since the current map was first used in 2012.

Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor is considered a swing vote in this case since she sided with the minority to throw out the current map in 2011.

O'Connor asked Track why he kept comparing the new map to the current one, which is considered one of the most gerrymandered maps in the country, and arguably sparked the 2018 vote to change the process.

So why use that as your starting point and not just.

Scrap everything and start over from scratch.

They they did, in fact, I'm just making the point that if you do compared to that plan, which which has been criticized but was never overruled, that that that if you look at that plan, that clearly.

Didn't the people overrule it?

I mean it, maybe not.

You know, in front of us or another court.

But the people in their vote overruled what had been done up to that point, did they not your honor?

The way I would answer that is to say the people said they wanted less Partizan districts, and that's exactly what they got.

And I don't know if they were thinking back to the 2011 plan.

I will say this.

If they were, it would have been very easy for the General Assembly and the people to have put language, very specific language to say you can't have you have to have proportional representation.

I mean that they could have been very clear about that.

They didn't.

So that would seem to suggest they weren't really thinking about the 2011 plan necessarily.

Strike restated his argument that this new map has more competitive districts and is therefore less Partizan, which is what voters wanted.

And he also said lawmakers didn't have other maps that would be better.

And his follow up, Stafford, said this new map is more gerrymandered than that 2011 one.

And he closed with an analogy that might be understandable, but perhaps difficult.

Just weeks after OSU lost the big game.

So if Ohio State every year has to spot Michigan a two touchdown lead, it might make the game more competitive.

The rules are set up to favor one team over the other.

And that's exactly what they've done here.

They're supposedly competitive districts.

The law that created the new congressional map sets a March fourth filing deadline for candidates for a May primary.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose filed a brief that didn't defend the Maps constitutionality, but asked for a quick ruling.

Decisions on this map and on the State House and Senate Maps argued before the court a few weeks ago are expected soon.

As we entered the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, Ohio's death toll is staggering.

The state reports deaths twice a week.

Just this month, there have been 2209 COVID deaths reported in Ohio as of December 28.

That's an average of nearly 74 people per day in just this month alone, not adding in the numbers expected on New Year's Eve.

Since June first, when nearly all Ohioans had the opportunity to get vaccinated, there have been 8882 COVID deaths in Ohio, an average of almost 42 people in Ohio dying each day who have tested positive for COVID.

Ohio also hit a record in the pandemic this week with hospitalizations.

They've top a 5308 COVID patients reported on December 15th, 2020.

Adjusted for the size of the population that is the highest rate of hospitalization for COVID of any state in the United States.

We also have a positivity rate in terms of testing of over 24%, that's in the top two states in the United States.

The strain on the state's hospital system, which is still dealing with the Delta variant and now the fast spreading Omicron variant.

Lt.

Governor Mike DeWine to call up an additional 1250 members of the Ohio National Guard to help in hospitals.

This is not something that we do lightly.

These are our fellow citizens, women, the men we are asking them by mobilizing them to leave their families.

We're asking them to leave their jobs.

We're asking them to leave their homes.

So it is a huge sacrifice and we are very grateful for their willingness throughout this pandemic to do that.

These guard personnel will join 460 Ohio National Guard members in Cleveland.

160 in Toledo and 100 in Columbus.

Others are in the process of being deployed to Mansfield, Dayton and liner.

Next week, we'll hear more on that mission from Major General John Harris Jr.

The Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard.

This fall, the Delta variant brought a flood of COVID patients to Ohio's hospitals and intensive care units.

And as the state finds itself in that place again, it's worth looking back and hearing the words of exhausted, frustrated and increasingly vulnerable medical professionals who are still holding that front line.

As reported by my Statehouse News Bureau colleague Joe Ingles in September, introduced by the bureau's Andy Chow.

Ohio's hospitals report they are at or near capacity right now because of a surge in COVID patients to levels not seen since last winter, as medical professionals overwhelmingly continue to recommend COVID vaccines and masks, even if makeshift hospital set up at the start of the pandemic are stood up again.

That won't solve the problem.

There are not enough doctors, nurses and other staff to take care of the many patients who are trending younger, sicker and nearly in all cases, unvaccinated.

State House correspondent Joe Ingles reports.

Just a couple of months ago, Shakeela McCarty was a nurse at a Columbus hospital.

So over the last year and a half weeks, we've seen a lot.

We've been through a lot.

It's been very taxing on the health care community.

It started out where we got all the support of the community and then it turned into kind of a distrust between the health care community and the community, you know, our community .

It became where we felt more threatened as health care workers.

And I just I was tired of feeling like that.

We've seen a lot of death, a lot of very sick individuals.

We've had to have some very difficult heart to heart conversations with family members.

And it just it takes a toll on you mentally after after a while.

McCarty says the toll was so great that she quit and she now works for an insurance company.

Other nurses and medical staffers are doing the same.

Further exacerbating a shortage of medical care professionals.

Everybody at the hospital seems to be dealing with belligerent, aggressive family members of people who don't believe in the reality of COVID.

They get upset about restrictions and visitation.

They they want treatments that are not.

Evidence based or have evidence that they're ineffective, but, you know, they get frustrated because they they hear something, they read something on Facebook, Oh, this helps.

And then they want it.

And that's very frustrating.

Smaller hospitals are also affected.

Dr. Gregory Lam works in a hospital in a small town near Columbus.

He says doctors and nurses are putting their own health and sometimes their lives on the line daily.

He recently saw it firsthand when a medical team was trying to keep a COVID patient alive.

And I saw our nurses, a respiratory therapist, working valiantly to resuscitate him.

In some cases, their own PPE was falling off because they were so vigorously pumping on his chest and trying to intubate him.

In some cases, our respiratory therapists were literally inches from his face, which was spewing secretions, and I knew that they were exposing themselves to the coronavirus.

Now everyone was vaccinated, but we know that these breakthrough infections occurred and they knew that too.

But yet they still did their job to try to save this man's life, and I knew that they wouldn't stop until they were told to stop.

But this weighs on us because on one hand, we have we took an oath to help people.

But on the other hand, we know that we're potentially jeopardizing our families.

We're potentially jeopardizing our own lives.

And that's tough.

Medical staff and hospitals are not the only ones feeling strained right now.

Dr. Michael Joseph works with a medical group that operates urgent care in central Ohio, where many people are going to get COVID tests being requested for employers traveling or entry into special events.

The sort of expectation that we are a fast food restaurant of COVID testing, if you will, has definitely affected staff morale.

And he says the front office staff often takes the brunt of it.

I've had people, you know, front desk people in tears that I've had to, you know, help counsel here and try and, you know, regroup.

And, you know, I've had to talk to patients who were inappropriate with our staff and, you know, help them calm down as well.

The shortage of health care workers right now is real in clinics, along with big and small medical facilities.

We have nurses leaving the field, retiring early, finding jobs elsewhere, because the long hours, the 16 hour days, a 20 hour days extra shifts, the emotional strain that it is putting on them.

As the numbers continue to dwindle, staff wise is making them want to get out of the medical field.

On top of that, as you mentioned, our COVID numbers are now going up.

So in June and July, I didn't see any COVID patients.

August, September.

Now the majority of my sense is in the hospital.

Are COVID patients and they are younger.

Anywhere from 30 to 50 is what we're seeing here in northwest Ohio.

Dr. Allen Rivera says COVID patients are very sick and tend to stay in hospitals longer than the average patient.

The pandemic is affecting people with other problems, too.

Those suffering heart attacks and accidents and with other illnesses that cannot get treatment because COVID patients are using valuable resources.

Impacting all other patients who require care in our schools.

ICU beds atmo beds are full.

Just this week alone, I received approximately ten to 15 calls from doctors in our community, our state and the surrounding Tri-State area, requesting Echo for their dying patients.

These patients are anywhere from the ages of 18 to 60.

But actually, this time the majority are in their twenties to forties, as you outlined, often otherwise healthy.

These patients are healthy this time around, and the vast majority are unvaccinated.

However, we have no space and we don't have the additional nurses this time.

We have to put them on the waiting list, something we learned to do it during our last surge of COVID, when we had to turn multiple patients away because of resources.

And too many times than not, these patients die at the other hospital waiting for this critical resource.

And again, doctors and nurses are the ones seeing that happen over and over.

I'm sad to think that we couldn't care for somebody.

Because we just didn't have the room to do it.

I think of the pressure that it weighs on that family member hoping to just be able to if I just get to this place, maybe they'll have a chance and they're waiting for days and days and weeks or not even getting that chance anymore because they unfortunately, they expire.

And that's just not, you know, we're just looking at their names from a bed for a day or they are patient I'm waiting for.

But this is somebody's mom or somebody's dad or somebody's brother.

They're human being, too.

They're not just a number of not just in name.

We've got patients in their thirties, you know, and now we're dealing with women who are pregnant and they're in their thirties and.

It's just a sad, sad situation that we're dealing with, and I think everybody here is emotionally exhausted and and just really affected personally, you know, at work and at home, it's hard to come in with the staffing levels that we have with the the shortages of equipment that we have and and play that that balancing game that we play every day with, with beds, with equipment.

A study this spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested a significantly increased suicide rate for nurses who are the largest component of the health care workforce.

Those who look out for the mental health of medical workers say it's important to remember the impact of the pandemic on those subjected to the worst parts of it .

Every day the nurses are struggling to the are struggling to the people who clean the rooms at the hospital and the people that are drawing your blood.

If you go to the hospital, I know it's hard, but just try to be kind.

Joe Ingles Statehouse News Bureau.

And three months later, as the numbers soar past the 2020 totals, health care workers are overwhelmed.

It is beyond difficult.

Our beds are full.

There's nowhere else to go and we are just as short staffed as everybody else is seeing as well.

So anywhere that I can come in, I might have a flex assignment.

And at that same time, so does my coworker, who's sitting right next to me on the same pod.

So what a day looks like.

We're coming in is the constant beeping of ventilators and IV pumps, and we're wondering, where is that beeping coming from?

And we are rushing praying that it's not a life saving medication that is beeping in that room because I might be caught up in another isolation room and heaven forbid, I'm missing something.

And that is always our biggest fear is that we are missing something because we are so maxed.

We are tired and we are frustrated and we want the best for all of our patients and all of the family members that are coming.

And that seems to be the hardest thing of everything.

That we constantly feel that we are bearing the weight of is the emotional support that we are needing to constantly provide for our families who cannot be there sometimes because they live two and a half hours away, or if it's because they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders for feeling guilty because they are the ones that gave their loved one laying in that hospital bed covered.

You and your other nurses throughout the state have been doing this for unfortunately, not just months, but now, now into years.

I mean, how do you how do you how do you deal with that?

I would be lying if I was saying I dealt with it well.

I'm grateful.

I'm sorry that that we have a lot of counselors and we have a lot of support that help us through it because it's hard because we take it home every day.

There's not a patient that I'm not thinking about that when I come into work, and I'm wondering what happened to that patient that I took care of the day before and all I'm thinking in my head, I'm praying that the family got there to be able to say goodbye.

That's really hard.

This week, Ohio's major hospital systems asked school superintendents, administrators and board members to keep or impose mask mandates for students coming back to class after the holiday break.

The letter, released by the Ohio Hospital Association, says that will help with the rising totals of COVID positive patients, and it reads in part, We're fighting hard to save their lives while treating other Ohioans who need our help.

Like children with broken bones, people suffering from strokes or those needing emergency care after a car accident.

We can't do this alone, with Omicron spreading quickly through Ohio.

We need everyone's help to make it through the coming weeks.

Please help us by requiring students to wear masks when they return to school.

As of December 16th, masks were optional in just over half of Ohio's more than 600 public school districts, representing more than 70% of all public school students in the state.

Masks were required for all students in around 40% of districts, representing less than a quarter of all students.

And finally, we end the show this year on a positive note.

A new interactive display is up and spinning at the Ohio State House with info about all 88 counties.

The County Commissioners Association of Ohio spent $60,000 to put it together with the help of Dublin based company Rodo.

The goal of the display really is to promote the relationship between state government and the 88 counties that are depicted on the wheel.

It's a unique partnership.

The state government has its role, but think of the 88 counties as almost 80 regional offices of county government.

We're connected at the hip, and so this is sort of a graphic way to show the young people that come through the map room and through the museum here in the State House that all the various counties there from that we're all part of a big family.

It all comes back to the center of Ohio and the State House, and the goal here was the interactive thing.

I don't know if you've had a chance to spin the wheel, but you can spin the wheel.

A county comes up, there's Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland area, but all 88 counties are here.

It's a fun way to learn.

You need an interactive display.

Kids want to put their hands on things and make it happen.

And you know it can't be just a museum piece.

That's why we went with an interactive display.

The partnership between the people of Ohio that live in these 88 counties and their state government, and we want to reinforce that every opportunity we get and the best way to do it is to start with the school kids that come here.

Their tours start here in the map room and in the Museum of the State House, and we want them to stand on their county on the map.

We want to look up their county and we want them to have fun, but we want them to remember what they've learned here today.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our web site at State News dot org, and you can follow us on the show on Facebook and Twitter.

Best wishes for a happy and safe new year.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org