More than 1,000 members of the Ohio National Guard have been ordered into hospitals…overwhelmed by patients being treated for COVID-19…and yes…the vast majority of people who are sick?…unvaccinated. The state is also hiring a staffing agency to help recruit nurses from out of state to assist with patient care. Of the Guard, 150 are medical workers…mainly nurses and EMTs…who will be assigned, beginning today, to hospitals largely in the Akron, Canton and Cleveland areas, which are seeing the highest hospitalization numbers. Most of those hospitals have stopped elective surgeries, and facilities elsewhere are considering the same, the governor says. The remaining Guard members will serve in as-needed hospital roles in other parts of the state. As of Friday, 4,723 people in Ohio were hospitalized with the coronavirus, a figure last seen almost a year ago. Nine of every 10 of those patients are unvaccinated. The state is facing a threefold challenge in still-surging cases attributed to the delta variant, the arrival of the faster-spreading omicron variant, and what’s predicted to be a normal flu season. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Ohio has risen over the past two weeks from 6,880 new cases per day on Dec. 1 to 8,333, daily, on Dec. 15…all this…according to data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.