COLUMBUS (AP) — With the state’s first death from the coronavirus. Gov. Mike DeWine says Ohio has now entered a new stage in the crisis.
The Ohio Department of Health call center is open 7 days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. to answer questions regarding COVID-19 at 1-833-4-ASK-ODH (1-833-427-5634).
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DeWine identified the man who died Wednesday as a 76-year-old attorney from the Toledo area who had recently traveled to California.
Illinois and New York state joined California on Friday in ordering all residents to stay in their homes unless they have vital reasons to go out, undertaking the most sweeping efforts yet in the U.S. to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Ohio has nearly 170 cases with nearly 40 hospitalizations.
Among those are several residents of a Dayton-area nursing home.
Dennis Propes is the Miami County health commissioner. He said Friday that 32 people from the skilled nursing facility are being tested with 11 considered presumptive cases of COVID-19.
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Central Ohio has confirmed 18 cases with 7 in Columbus and Worthington, 7 in the rest of Franklin County, 2 in Delaware County and 1 each in Licking and Union counties.
Citing the Miami County case as an example of the dangers posed to residents of care facilities by the virus, DeWine announced Friday that he is ordering all of Ohio’s senior centers and adult day care services to stop providing care in “congregate care settings,” single locations where more than 10 people, including staff and providers, are in a confined space.
The closure will be effective at the end of business on Monday.
Burgeoning coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes across the country are laying bare the risks of the industry’s long-running problems, including a struggle to control infections and a staffing crisis that relies on poorly paid aides who can’t afford to stay home sick.
That came into focus at the Life Care Center near Seattle, where investigators believe a contributing factor in 35 deaths were low-pay workers who came to work with the illness.
Those issues face renewed scrutiny amid new outbreaks in the Chicago suburb Willowbrook, with 46 infections and at least two facilities in New Jersey tied to four deaths.