COLUMBUS – Even though more than half of Ohio’s adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Mike DeWine says it’s no time to let up.
“It’s like a basketball team or a football team that has a lead. You can’t sit on the lead, you got to continue to score points,” DeWine said during a news conference introducing the latest winners of the prizes in the state’s Vax-a-Million incentive lottery.
Jonathan Carlyle, from Toledo, won the $1 million prize and Zoie Vincent, from Mayfield Village in Cuyahoga County, won a four-year college scholarship.
Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, chief medical officer at the Ohio Department of Health, reminded Ohioans that the unvaccinated, including everyone under the age of 12, are still at risk.
“We often think of COVID as being benign for children, but it is now one of the top 10 causes of death for children in the United States,” he said.
DeWine says 56% of Ohio’s adult population has received at least one dose of a vaccine and 5.3 million Ohioans – 45.65% of those age 12 and older — have started the vaccination process. An average of 19,000 Ohioans have gotten their first shots since DeWine announced the Vax-a-Million program, which has been imitated in several other states.
The 21-day average of new daily cases of COVID-19 in Ohio has dropped to 716.