COLUMBUS – Governor Mike DeWine said Monday was the day everyone had been waiting for.
The first vaccines against the coronavirus have arrived in Ohio as part of a national rollout, with front-line medical workers the first to receive doses.
The governor was joined by his wife, Fran DeWine, and Ohio State University President Kristina Johnson, to watch a box of 975 vaccines delivered to Ohio State medical in a UPS truck.
The University of Cincinnati medical center also received a similar supply, with eight more hospitals, including including Riverside Methodist Hospital to receive additional doses Tuesday.
The state is due to receive 1.3 million doses of vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna – if that drug is approved by the FDA — in the next two months but DeWine says that will only be the beginning of the effort to vaccinate everyone in the state.
“People can do the math and figure out – population under 12 million in Ohio – that it’s going to take a while for us to even get close to the herd immunity people are talking about,” DeWine said during a briefing Monday.
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Some experts estimate that between 70% and 90% of the populations must be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity, when there are not enough vulnerable potential hosts for the coronavirus to spread.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has invited Ohio to participate in an early launch of vaccinations in nursing homes, so vaccinations in a small number of nursing homes will begin Friday, three days earlier than scheduled.
The number of confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 in Ohio has increased by an average of more than 9,000 per day for the past three weeks, including 7,875 on Monday, raising the total number of cases since the onset of the pandemic to 570,602 on Monday. That is an increase of over 198,000 since Nov. 24, a rate of growth of over 50%.
“Even if it plateaus at this level, it is much too high and it’s not sustainable, according to the doctors who run the hospitals, so on this great day of happiness and celebration, we don’t want anyone not to understand the realities of what we face,” DeWine said.
There were 291 new hospital admissions Monday, with 5,157 COVID-19 patients in Ohio hospitals, 18.8% of the statewide capacity.
The 59 additional deaths brought the total to 7,551.
Ohio’s seven-day positivity rate is 15.2%.