Ohio Nearly Completes 1st Nursing Home Vaccine Distribution

COLUMBUS, OH — Ohio has nearly completed the first round of COVID-19 vaccinations at skilled nursing homes throughout the state.

"When we started distributing the vaccine in Ohio, one of our first goals was to vaccinate our most vulnerable in our nursing facilities," said Gov. Mike DeWine.

Health officials worked with four pharmacies to distribute vaccines to nursing homes. The four partner pharmacies are: Absolute, CVS, Pharm Script and Walgreens.

As of Wednesday, Absolute had administered 100 percent of its first-round vaccines, CVS had administered 97 percent of its first-round vaccines, Pharm Script had finished vaccination at 61 of 63 facilities and Walgreens had completed 95 percent of its first-round vaccinations.

All nursing homes were part of Ohio's Phase 1A vaccine distribution plan. This phase targeted Ohio's most vulnerable residents, along with front line health care workers.

Ohio is outpacing other states in administering COVID-19 vaccines to nursing home patients.

"As of today, 361,603 vaccines have been given in Ohio. We don't have enough vaccines in Ohio right now, but we hope our allotment will increase in the future - but as of right now we must deal with this scarcity," DeWine said Thursday.

However, there has been a struggle to get nursing home staff to take the COVID-19 vaccine. DeWine has previously said that as few as 40 percent of some facility staff were accepting their vaccine dose.