4:27 p.m. ET, March 22, 2021
Ohio vaccine availability can open to everyone 16 and older for providers needing to fill appointments
From CNN’s Jennifer Henderson
Ohio vaccine providers having trouble filling appointments can now open them up to anyone 16 and older, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Monday.
Earlier this month, DeWine announced vaccine availability would open to everyone 16 and older on March 29.
DeWine also announced changes to health orders regarding visitations in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Nursing homes and assisted living facilities will now be required to allow visitation for their residents, DeWine said.
Vaccinated residents will now be allowed, when wearing a mask, to have physical touch with their visitors, residents can also have visitation in their private rooms and visitations must be allowed to be a minimum of 30 minutes long, he added.
The list of compassionate care visit examples has also increased, DeWine said. Vaccinated staff will be required to have regular Covid-19 testing once a week, and unvaccinated staff must be tested two times a week, he added. If an outbreak occurs at one of these facilities, visitations will be limited, DeWine said.
Just two weeks ago, the total cases of Covid-19 variants was 32, now there are 173 variant cases, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, Chief Medical Officer of the Ohio Department of Health said.
Note: These numbers were released by the state's public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.