(24/7 News Source) -- State officials this week say that Governor Mike DeWine has sent a letter to now-President Joe Biden asking the new administration for more doses of the new COVID vaccine. Providers across the state are coming up short in terms of supply. DeWine advised Biden that Ohio would be open to adjusting its plans for vaccine to distribution to employ large-scale sites like arenas and other facilities, but that we just don't have enough of the drug.
A Central Ohio vaccine provider is being suspended over accusations of not properly monitoring storage temperatures for the COVID-19 vaccine. The Ohio Department of Health said yesterday that Specialty-RX found that almost 900 unused doses it was given to distribute at long-term care facilities were not stored properly. Specialty-RX originally had 15-hundred doses of vaccine to distribute and was in the process of transferring the remaining medicine to another provider when the error was discovered. The doses must be disposed of because they are now considered unusable.
The Ohio Health Department is reporting more than six-thousand daily cases of COVID-19 as the state is now over 840-thousand total cases since March. Wednesday's update showed six-thousand-378 new cases of the virus to push the cumulative total of COVID-19 positives in the state since the start of the pandemic to 842-thousand-433. The new report showed 404 more patients were admitted to Ohio's medical centers to be treated for the virus, and there were 73 new deaths.
The state of Ohio is no longer included on its own travel advisory list for areas with high COVID-19 positivity rates. Ohio and five other states were removed from the list, which shows areas with positivity rates of 15-percent or higher that travelers should self-quarantine after visiting. There are now 14 states on the list, including Mississippi, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Removed from last week's list were Nevada, South Carolina, Arizona, and Missouri, while Oregon, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kentucky, Maine, and Connecticut are considered potential risk areas due to incomplete data.