“We opened up at 8 a.m. and by 8:40 a.m., we were out of appointments,” Charles Patterson, health commissioner, said during his weekly update on coronavirus in the county. “We have 700 appointments this week for the first dose.”
Denise Williams, Springfield NAACP president, said this just means people are “trying hard to get in and get vaccinated,” who participated in the update.
Although there are other providers giving the vaccine, Patterson said it doesn’t look like there will be any left for next week.
“The CVS in Springfield is out of doses, the Kroger in Springfield is out of doses. It doesn’t look like any vaccine provider will be open in Clark County next week,” he said.
“The vaccine is very, very scarce. Across the state, some of the doses for the general public were set aside for K-12 educators as part of the governor’s plan to get school back in full time. Because of that, there are limited doses,” Patterson added.
About 500 schools across the state have begun vaccinating K-12 school staff as part of an effort to bring most students back to in-person or hybrid learning by March 1. Gov. Mike DeWine said the state’s goal is to have all school personnel who want the vaccine to have received their shot by the end of February.
Patterson said once most of the school employees have received their vaccine, hopefully more will be available next month.
“The governor said he is not adding any categories, it’s staying at 65 and older. We have two million people now in that group but not that many vaccines,” he said. “Once we’re done with the majority of schools, hopefully sometime in March there will be more vaccines available.”
Patterson added that cases are “way down from where it was,” but there is a disparity in the percentages of African Americans versus Caucasians signing up to get the vaccine.
“At the last testing clinic, we were seeing 60 people a day. We are now only seeing an average of 15 a day this week,” he said. “But there is a disparity in vaccinations in Ohio right now with only half of the percentage of African Americans as Caucasians. Only half of African Americans are being vaccinated than their white counterpart.”
Williams said she is encouraging the African American community to sign up to get the vaccine.
“COVID is hitting the African American community. I’m warning the African American community to please get your vaccinations,” she said.
Next week vaccinations will be available to the final age group in Phase 1B, ages 65 and older. DeWine said Thursday that the state will hold vaccine eligibility to ages 65 and older for the next few weeks.
Phase 1B started in mid January with Ohioans ages 80 and older. Each week, the state has expanded vaccinations by including Ohioans up to five years younger.
Vaccinations are also open to people with severe congenital, developmental and early onset medical disorders and an intellectual or medical disability, as well as K-12 school staff.
Clark County had 11,633 cases of the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, according to the Ohio Department of Health. The county had 282 deaths and 13 probable deaths, according to data from the CCCHD.
As of Friday, 12,408 vaccination shots had been given in Clark County, according to ODH. That’s about 9.25% of the county’s population.
Ohio’s daily coronavirus case average dropped below 4,000 on Friday for the fifth time in the last six days, according to ODH. The state has recorded 3,683 daily cases Friday. The state has averaged 4,766 cases a day.
The state has not recorded more than 6,000 cases since Jan. 21. After daily cases hovered around 6,000 to 7,000 a day after the holidays, the state has recorded less than 5,000 daily cases for the last eight days. Throughout the pandemic, 914,530 total cases have been reported in Ohio.
Sixty-two deaths attributed to the virus were reported on Friday, for a total of 11,571, according to ODH.
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