COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio is rolling out an online tool to allow state residents to look up locations where the coronavirus vaccine is available by county and ZIP code, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Thursday.
The tool will be available on the state’s coronavirus web site on Friday, and all local health departments should also have the information on their websites. Ohioans will have to contact the vaccine providers themselves, DeWine said.
The state will begin offering vaccines to people 80 and older on Tuesday, and will start vaccinating people in younger age brackets in the following weeks.
Ohio still has a limited supply of vaccines but eventually wants to vaccinate anyone who wants the shots, the governor said.
“We’re not there yet. We don’t have the supplies yet. We have to take this literally one week at a time,” DeWine said.
The state’s top priorities continue to be using the vaccine to save lives by making older adults a priority, allow children to go back to school, and help front-line medical workers. DeWine said people 65 and older account for nearly nine of every 10 coronavirus deaths in Ohio.
Also Thursday, the state reported that Ohio claims for both initial and continuing unemployment have jumped amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The state human services agency said Ohioans filed 37,309 initial jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 9. That’s a 26% jump over last week and the highest number of weekly claims in a month. Ohioans filed 278,026 continued jobless claims last week, slightly above the figure for the week before, according to the data from the state Department of Job and Family Services.
The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in Ohio has risen over the past two weeks from 6,561 new cases per day on Dec. 30 to 8,117 new cases per day on Jan. 13, according to an Associated Press analysis of data provided by The COVID Tracking Project. Ohio has seen 9,881 COVID-19 related deaths to date, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.
The Health Department says 338,778 Ohioans have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine to date.