Governor DeWine announced that he has asked Ohio’s local health departments and vaccine providers that are offering the Pfizer vaccine to coordinate with local high schools to offer vaccinations to high school students who are 16 or older. Pfizer is the only vaccine that is currently approved for children as young as 16.
Today’s announcement follows last week’s announcement that vaccination clinics will be offered at all higher education campuses in the coming weeks.
“As with our colleges, by taking vaccines to schools, we’ll increase the percentage of people in this age group who choose to get vaccinated,” said Governor DeWine.
Individuals who receive their first dose of vaccine at a pop-up site will be guaranteed their second dose at the same site approximately three weeks later. Details on how to register for an appointment will be available in the coming days.
The 50,000 total vaccine doses (including Columbus) that will be available as part of these pop-up mass vaccination clinics are being reallocated from Ohio’s unused long-term care vaccine supply that was initially required by the federal government to be set aside for use in Ohio’s more than 2,400 long-term care facilities as part of the federal long-term care program. Ohio has already administered nearly 160,000 reallocated doses from the program.
Cintas Center 1624 Herald Avenue
First dose clinic dates: March 18, 19, 20 – 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
Second dose clinic date: April 8, 9, 10 – 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
This state-sponsored, pop-up mass vaccination site will be operated by Kroger in cooperation with Cincinnati Public Health, Hamilton County Public Health, and the Health Collaborative. The clinic will offer approximately 10,000 first doses and 10,000 second doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
Also, approximately 2,500 first doses and 2,500 second doses will be administered in Kroger stores located in high-risk Cincinnati-area communities that could be disproportionately impacted by the virus.
The Kroger clinic locations will be announced.
The Columbus and Cincinnati pop-up mass vaccination clinics being held next week are in addition to 15 permanent state-sponsored mass vaccination clinics and one state-federal mass vaccination clinic announced last week.
To learn more about the Cleveland mass vaccination site visit governor.ohio.gov.
For details on the 15 permanent mass vaccination sites located regionally across the state, visit coronavirus.ohio.gov.
BREAKING UPDATE: Bloomberg News has reported this morning (12-2-2020) that the Pfizer vaccine scheduled for the Loveland Area has received approval in Britain. “The emergency authorization clears the way for the deployment of a vaccine that Pfizer and its German partner have said is 95% effective in preventing illness. The shot will be available in Britain from next week.” This is ahead of decisions in the U.S. and European Union. Read on…
Today, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine toured the Ohio Department of Health’s Receipt, Store, and Stage (RSS) warehouse facility located in Central Ohio, to see the facility and review the process that will be used to redistribute the COVID-19 vaccine in Ohio.
The Ohio Department of Health’s Vaccine Preparedness Office has been preparing for the arrival of the vaccine for months, distributing adult influenza vaccine with the same process that will be used to distribute the COVID-19 as a test exercise, and running daily drills with prototype packaging to break down and repackage the vaccine in smaller units.
There are currently 2,931 active COVID 19 cases in Clermont County
There are currently 33,498 active COVID 19 cases in Hamilton County.
There are currently 9,421 active COVID 19 cases in Warren County.
On Monday, the Ohio Department of Health took part in a nationwide end-to-end training exercise with the packaging that will be used to distribute the Pfizer vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is expected to be the first manufacturer to receive the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The vaccine will be shipped to Ohio using the following process:
The Pfizer vaccine will be shipped directly to Ohio’s 10 prepositioned hospital sites. As vaccine supply increases, additional providers will receive direct shipments if ordering 975 doses or more of the vaccine.
Providers requiring fewer than 975 doses, such as smaller local health departments and physician’s offices, will not receive a direct shipment from Pfizer. In these cases, Pfizer will ship the vaccine to the ODH RSS warehouse, where the vaccine will be redistributed in increments of 100. The warehouse is equipped with ultracold freezers that can each hold up to 720,000 doses to be stored in the RSS at any one time.
When vaccinations are ready to be shipped from the RSS warehouse, they must be removed from ultracold storage and repackaged with dry ice in under two minutes. To ensure the vaccine can be repackaged safely, quickly, and effectively, ODH staff and members of the Ohio National Guard are running daily practice drills that include the following steps:
Each box is transported to a table where the vials are counted.
The box is closed and handed off to another team member who will place the vaccine box in a larger cold shipping container lined with bubble wrap..
Once the correct number of doses are placed in the larger cold shipping container, dry ice is added to the package, along with a sheet of cardboard. The lid is replaced and the package proceeds to the next step.
The package is sealed, a shipping label is applied, and the package is moved out for delivery.
All packages will be delivered to the providers within six hours. The vaccine will remain stable if sealed in the original shipping container from the RSS warehouse with dry ice for up to 5 days.
Vaccine National Drug Control (NDC) and lot number information will all be tracked electronically, and parcels will be tracked as they are delivered. Each delivery vehicle will contain a GPS enabled device.
Here is video of ODH staff and members of the Ohio National Guard practice drills
Upon granting of an emergency use authorization, it is anticipated that the Moderna vaccine will be shipped directly to providers administering the vaccine and will not be processed by ODH at the RSS warehouse.
Health care workers and nursing home residents should be at the front of the line when the first coronavirus vaccine shots become available, an influential government advisory panel said on Tuesday.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices who make recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted 13-1 today that Health care workers and nursing home residents should receive coronavirus vaccine shots when they become available.
![[VIDEO] Governor visits RSS Warehouse site as State prepares for vaccine distribution](https://lovelandmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/hypo-needle.jpg)
