COLUMBUS – A statewide curfew encouraging Ohioans to stay home between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. has been extended for three weeks, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Wednesday.
The decision to extend curfew until Jan. 23 was made because state officials and health leaders do not know what effect the Christmas and New Year’s holidays will have on the state’s hospitals and health care systems, which are currently 73% full, DeWine said.
He said the state “must continue to be cautious.”
On Wednesday, 4,409 Ohioans were in the hospital for COVID-19, 22% of the 20,121 patients occupying hospital beds. Coronavirus patients occupied 16% of the state’s total inpatient hospital capacity, 22.4% of the intensive-care unit capacity and 14.7% of its ventilators, according to the latest Ohio Department of Health data.
There were 366 new hospitalizations Wednesday, bringing the total since the onset of the pandemic to 38,002.
“The COVID vaccine is here and hope is on the horizon for better health and a brighter year. But we must continue what we are doing to maintain this downward trend while we work to get our community vaccinated and protected,” Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts said.
Ohioans are advised to continue to stay at home and to only leave to go to work or school or for essential needs such as medical care, groceries, medicine and food pick up.
Picking up carry-out or a drive-thru meal and ordering for delivery is permitted, but serving food and drink to customers inside a bar or restaurant is prohibited after 10:00 p.m.
Residents are also advised not to have any guests in their homes and to celebrate New Year’s Eve and watch sporting events at home with only the people in their household.
Amid concerns that the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines nationwide has been slower than expected, the state is asking hospitals to administer vaccinations within 24 hours after they receive them and report that information back to the health department, DeWine said, acknowledging that progress has been slow.
President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that only 2.1 million Americans have begun the vaccination process, well short of the 20 million vaccinations the Trump administration predicted by the end of December.
Officials and health care facilities have no control over how fast the vaccine comes to Ohio, DeWine said, but they can control how fast they administer shots and “there is a moral imperative to get the vaccine out just as soon as we can.”
The state reported 94,078 individuals had received the first of two doses of ths COVID-19 vaccine, 0.8% of the state’s total population.
Ohio is expected to receive more than 238,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines next week, DeWine said.
The governor also announced that students will no longer be forced to quarantine if they were wearing masks when they were exposed to someone with the virus in the classroom. The change follows a study on the virus spread in school.
The state reported 8,178 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, bringing the total number of those who have contracted the disease since the pandemic began in March to 690,748.
There were 133 additional deaths, raising the state’s toll to 8,855.
The seven-day average of Ohioans testing positive for the virus was 13%.