Gov. Mike DeWine said that social distancing efforts are starting to pay off and are helping to flatten the coronavirus curve in Ohio.

His state has followed others, such as New York, Washington, California and Maryland, by taking drastic measures to curtail the Covid-19 outbreak.

"It's you really do two things at once you're trying to keep the social distancing to prolong this make push it out further away, so that we have time to actually do the build out and do all the work that that we need needs to be done to get ready for the surge that's coming," DeWine told The Pod's Honest Truth's David Brody.

Ohio had 867 confirmed coronavirus cases and 15 deaths as of 2 p.m. Thursday. However, there still could be 6,000 to 8,000 additional cases of coronavirus per day at its peak, the state health director said. DeWine says state officials project the number of COVID-19 cases won’t hit its peak until May 1.

Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said Thursday said things could have been much worse last week - possibly close to 40,000 new infections a day - had such aggressive efforts not been made to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

On March 12, DeWine issued a sweeping order to close all K-12 schools throughout the state through April 3, and on March 22, a statewide stay-at-home order was issued that will remain in place until at least April 6.

DeWine said the health department has had to force some business to shut that weren't complying with the stay-at-home order.

It's important to take such an approach because of the number of Ohio cities with significant populations, he said.

"We're almost a state of city states, and so we got a lot of different regions."