COLUMBUS – Hospital workers in Columbus and around the nation unloaded truckloads of frozen vials of COVID-19 vaccines Monday morning as the largest inoculation campaign in U.S. history got underway.
Governor Mike DeWine was on hand as a truck rolled up to the OSU Wexner Medical Center, bringing the first of thousands of doses due in Ohio over the next two weeks.
“This is an historic occasion. This is hope. This is the beginning of the end of the pandemic,” he tweeted.
Wexner Medical Center and UC Health in Cincinnati each received 975 doses Monday morning with eight other hospitals due to receive 975 doses apiece on Tuesday, DeWine said.
Early supplies are sparse, and health care workers were first in line, not just doctors and nurses but also janitors and other staff.
The first of 9,750 vaccines from Pfizer were earmarked for 10 prepositioned hospital sites around the state and an additional 88,725 vaccines will be delivered to Walgreens and CVS retailers for nursing home residents and staff.
How well initial vaccinations go will help reassure a wary public when it’s their turn sometime next year.
Around Dec. 22, another shipment of 201,000 vaccines is expected from Moderna. Governor Mike DeWine explained last week that these vaccines will go to 98 hospitals to vaccinate those who are exposed to COVID patients and to 108 health departments around the state to vaccinate other frontline workers such as those working in emergency medical services.
Another shipment of 123,000 doses is also expected in Ohio from Pfizer at the same time. Those vaccines will go to Walgreens and CVS for vaccination of long-term care patients and staff.
Ohio expects another 148,000 vaccines from Pfizer and 89,000 vaccines from Moderna within the next few days.
The state reported over 20,000 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend, bringing the total number of Ohioans infected since the onset of the pandemic to 562,727. An additional 66 deaths were reported over the weekend, bringing the state’s death toll to 7,492.
As the nation’s death toll from the pandemic hovered around the 300,000 mark, a new poll found little increase in alarm among Americans about COVID-19 infections and no significant change in opinion about how the government should act to slow the spread.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds about 4 in 10 Americans say they are extremely or very worried about themselves or a family member being infected with the virus. That’s about the same as in October and slightly lower than in surveys conducted in March and in July.