vaccine
Activists want anti-vaccine amendment in Ohio Constitution
State politicians advanced an effort Tuesday to place anti-vaccination language onto a general election ballot, which would leave the fate of vaccine mandates in Ohio in voters’ hands. If passed, Ohio would become the only state in the nation with an explicit ban of vaccine mandates in its constitution. It would mark a major step […]
GOP gubernatorial candidate shares photo of self in front of swastika
Update, 1:40 p.m.: After this article was published, Blystone removed the photo in question from social media. Also, a union depicted in the photo said it did not endorse Blystone and doesn’t know who’s holding the swastika. A longshot candidate challenging Ohio’s incumbent governor in a Republican primary shared a photo of himself in front […]
COVID vaccination hits record lull in Ohio; less than 2 in 3 are vaccinated
Ohio’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign has hit a new lull after two months of record low numbers of residents getting vaccinated. While the concept of diminishing marginal returns would suggest this is to be expected, Ohio remains under-vaccinated on a national and international scale. Just 62% of state residents are vaccine-started, and 57% are vaccine completed. […]
Ohio leads nation in COVID-19 deaths over last week
Ohio led the nation in COVID-19 deaths over the last seven days. The finding, per a New York Times tracker of federal data, belies the good news that infections and hospitalizations caused by the new coronavirus have trended downward over the course of the first month of 2022 in Ohio and around the U.S. Death […]
Ohio’s pandemic politics cast long shadow over omicron surge
After a severe bout of COVID-19 put him in the ICU and left him with significant respiratory systems, Dr. Emily Amin’s patient had questions about getting vaccinated. Most of the COVID-19 patients Amin treats at the Wexner Medical Center are either vaccinated but manage an immune-compromising condition, or unvaccinated. In an interview, Amin recounted how […]
Ohio is 2nd in nation for COVID-19 deaths over last week
Ohio is second in the nation per capita in terms of the reported COVID-19 death rate over the last seven days, according to a database from The New York Times. Only Wyoming experienced a higher rate of COVID-19 deaths over the past week, the data shows. Nearly 30,000 Ohioans have died of COVID-19, including some […]
Ohio Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit targeting vaccine lottery
The Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit Thursday that alleged the state’s COVID-19 vaccine lottery program was an illegal spend and that mask mandates violate a Holocaust-era ethics doctrine around experiments with human subjects. The court dismissed the suit on legal grounds like standing and jurisdiction and left alone the vaccine conspiracy theories that undergirded […]
Senate GOP signals skepticism on vaccine mandate ban
Several Republicans in the Ohio Senate indicated reluctance to legislation prohibiting universities, employers, and most health care facilities from requiring vaccination against COVID-19. All but one Republican in the chamber passed House Bill 218 last month, overriding objections from business, health care, and public health organizations. During Senate committee reviews and interviews Tuesday, however, some […]
About 40% of Ohio’s nursing home staff are unvaccinated; mandates blocked for now in court
At Auglaize Acres, more than 81% of the nursing home’s patients are vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to less than 30% of the caregivers, federal data shows. The facility, located in Auglaize County off of Infirmary Road, asked its staff why they haven’t yet received the vaccine. Administrator Rick Hartline chalked it up to fear of […]
Health care PACs fund campaigns of anti-vaccine legislators
Nearly 3,900 Ohioans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the most since mid-January, when vaccines were a scarce commodity allocated only to the neediest recipients. Through the pandemic, meanwhile, the Ohio Hospital Association’s PAC has contributed $13,000 to Republican lawmakers who co-sponsored legislation to ban vaccine mandates from hospitals, colleges, and employers in Ohio. Critics of […]
House GOP passes vaccine mandate ban after months of effort
After nearly six months of sustained efforts from anti-vaccination lawmakers and activists, Ohio House Republicans passed legislation Thursday prohibiting schools, colleges, and employers from requiring vaccination from employees and students. The legislation also extends a broad immunity for people and businesses against lawsuits alleging they negligently spread COVID-19. It passed with a nearly party line, […]
‘Money without oversight;’ lawmaker proposes giving nursing homes $300 million
State lawmakers are considering giving Ohio’s nursing homes $300 million in federal funds to recover from the pandemic with no requirements regarding caregiver pay or quality of care. The lump sum payment in House Bill 461 would come with no requirements that the funds go to raise notoriously low salaries of the caregiver workforce or […]