As shots go into arms, advocates for prisoners, teachers, restaurant employees and court staffers jostled to be next in line for vaccination against COVID-19.
With Ohio health care workers receiving vaccinations and the vaccine scheduled to reach the first skilled nursing home residents and employees Friday, groups are lobbying Gov. Mike DeWine to be among the early recipients of doses of vaccine.
DeWine welcomes such suggestions, but observed Tuesday the state’s priorities for who is vaccinated when remain a “work in progress” as health officials await federal guidance and more definitive information on the numbers and flow of vaccines to Ohio.
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State health officials said the number of reported new cases Wednesday is artificially low due to “technological difficulties” that prevented labs from reporting all COVID-19 cases. The 5,409 new coronavirus cases that were reported Wednesday would have been about 4,200 below the three-week daily average if they were accurate.
The 123 new reported fatalities (tied for the fifth most in a day) boosted the toll of December – the deadliest month of the nine-month-old pandemic – to 1,348, an average of 84 a day.
A total of 497 daily hospitalizations were reported, dwindling the number of virus patients – with discharges – to 5,143, about 150 below the all-time-high set Tuesday.
Hospitalizations this month have averaged slightly more than 400 a day, compared to 258 in November. The number of intensive-care unit patients ticked down Wednesday to 1,254 from the record set Tuesday.
Amid the pleas for vaccination, the initial shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Ohio this week saw 10 hospitals receive about 10,000 doses, with nearly 90,000 reserved for vaccination clinics at nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
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The state projects the receipt of 420,000 more doses, including the soon-to-be approved Moderna vaccine, next week, with emergency medical responders and residents and employees of group homes for the mentally disabled and elderly also targeted for early inoculations. Both of the first two vaccines require two shots weeks apart.
Local health departments will receive many of those doses for homes with the elderly not targeted for shots through the federal program involving pharmacies as the pandemic stands at record heights.
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With 118 inmates dying and nearly 7,000 infections as coronavirus swept through state prisons, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio called on DeWine to make the 44,000 prisoners a priority for vaccinations in the first round.
“Ohio has a moral and legal obligation to protect the lives and health of the people that it has chosen to hold as prisoners,” said Freda Levenson, ACLU Ohio legal director. “There is no valid justification for discriminating among people living in different types of congregate living facilities.”
Jocelyn Rosnick, ACLU Ohio policy director, added, “Ohio remains one of the worst states in the nation for fatality rates of individuals behind bars; by including incarcerated individuals in the immediate vaccination distribution plan Ohio could attempt to rewrite the narrative.”
More than 3,100 corrections officers and other state prison employees also have contracted COVID-19 amid a recent spike among workers. Seven employees have died.
While tentative, the state had penciled in employees and residents of prisons and jails for the second wave of vaccinations, along with the elderly, school teachers and staff, the homeless, those of all ages with chronic health conditions and public health and human service employees.
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The Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has been lobbying state officials for months to take care of its members early and called Dec. 3 for the suspension of in-person learning until Jan. 11 amid the spike in cases. Current figures show more than 11,000 cumulative virus cases among teachers and staff.
“We do believe that people that work in schools need to be near the top of the priority list when it comes to making the vaccine available when it’s safe,” said union President Scott DiMauro. “We need to make sure schools are safe in order for schools to be fully open, and vaccination is a critical piece of that puzzle.”
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor sent a letter to DeWine last week saying court staffers should be included in the first phase of vaccines. She noted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has identified “‘judges, lawyers, and others providing legal assistance’ as essential critical infrastructure workers.”
“Without the vaccination of judges and other essential justice system workers we run the very real risk of devastating a system where thousands of court cases have already been delayed or postponed creating a growing backlog,” O’Connor wrote.
In a letter last week, the Ohio Restaurant Association asked DeWine to place food-service workers and grocery and retail workers to be next in line for vaccination once shots have been administered to health care workers and long-term care residents.
“Restaurant and foodservice employees have already been deemed essential workers by the federal government and swift deployment of a vaccine could help protect employees and save the restaurant industry, which has faced capacity and curfew restrictions for nearly nine months that many other sectors have not, including retail,” wrote John Barker, the group’s president.
‘Workers in industries and occupations important to the functioning of society” and at increased risk of virus exposure – along with children and young adults – are in the third phase for vaccination under the state’s health plan.
Healthy members of the public at large will the last to be vaccinated, a step DeWine has acknowledged will take months to arrive as federal officials allocate dosages to the states.
COVID-19 cases by Ohio county
rludlow@dispatch.com
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