Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said on Wednesday that 60% of nursing home staff members statewide opted not to get the coronavirus vaccine when it was offered to them and that the vaccine rollout was not going as fast as state officials had hoped.
DeWine’s comments came during a news briefing that discussed the vaccine rollout in Ohio, and showed his clear dissatisfaction with the rollout.
“I’m not satisfied with where we are in Ohio,” DeWine said. “We’re not moving fast enough, but we’re going to get there, and we’re going to speed this thing up.”
In Ohio’s vaccination plan, nursing homes will each get three initial visits for getting the vaccine, to give people at least two chances to get their first dose of the vaccine before the final visit.
“We wish we had higher compliance”
“We’re not going to make them, but we wish we had a higher compliance,” DeWine said. “And our message today is, [the] train may not be coming back for a while.”
As of December 21, Ohio had only used 14.3% of its allotted vaccine doses, while the rest of the country has used on average 19.3% of the stockpile.
“While we can’t control how much comes in every week, we certainly can control how fast that we get it out,” he said. “That is incumbent upon all of us Ohioans to make sure it gets out as fast as we can get it out. It is a lifesaver.”
The state has vaccinated 94,078 people to date, but expects to receive over 600,000 doses by the end of the year.
Nationwide vaccinations falling short
The Trump administration said previously that it expected to vaccinate 20 million people by the close of 2020, but will fall short of those goals.
NPR reported that only 2.7 million people have been vaccinated in the U.S. so far, but admits that its data is at least 72 hours out of date.
Between 12 and 14 million vaccine doses have been delivered to states, according to varying reports compiled by NPR.
In several locations, glitches led to vaccination problems; in Florida, fewer doses were delivered to several nursing homes than expected, and in Wisconsin, a provider failed to keep the virus at the correct temperature, and around 500 doses had to be destroyed.
The post Report: 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio chose not to get COVID-19 vaccine first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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