Vaccinations down 90% in Clark County

Drop in first doses is ‘really an issue,’ health commissioner says.

Scarcity of available houses in Springfield is helping them sell almost as fast as they are listed.

First doses of COVID-19 vaccinations are down 90% in Clark County, according to the county’s health commissioner.

Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Charles Patterson said the county is doing well on second dose statistics, but first doses have dropped off sharply in the last couple of weeks.

“We are going to do almost 4,000 second doses this week,” Patterson said. “The flip side of that, the bad news, is we are only doing about 400 new vaccines. So that’s a 90% decline in first doses. It’s really an issue.”

As of Friday, 48,247 vaccination shots had been given in Clark County, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

Roughly 36% of the county’s total population has received at least one vaccine shot. That’s below the state rate of 38.6%.

However, Clark County is ahead of the state’s rate of full vaccinations. Nearly 30% of the county is fully vaccinated, compared to 29% in the state.

But Patterson warned that with first doses dropping off, he wouldn’t be surprised to see the county fall behind the state.

“If we stop doing first doses we are going to quickly fall behind. I would not be surprised if that state average caught up with us in the next few weeks because of this quick drop-off,” Patterson said.

Clark County isn’t the only area seeing a drop-off in first doses. On Wednesday, Gov. Mike Dewine said the state is seeing a significant decline in first doses — dropping from 80,000 to 90,000 a day down to 30,000.

“It’s certainly not where we want to be,” Dewine said.

Patterson said the health district is now trying to come up with new campaigns to get people vaccinated, including holding more pop-up style clinics in different locations.

For example, on Saturday, the health district will hold a clinic from noon to 4 p.m. at the farmers market at Mother Stewart’s Brewing Company at 109 W. North St. in Springfield.

“There are a lot of people that still need to be immunized,” Patterson said.

Clark County had 13,738 cases and 294 deaths of the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, according to ODH.

Ohio reached its seventh day in a row with fewer than 2,000 daily cases of coronavirus, reporting 1,788 cases on Friday.

In the last three weeks, Ohio has recorded more than 2,000 daily cases nine times, according to ODH. Four of those days were from April 13-16. During the same threeweek period, the state averaged 1,914 cases a day.

Since the pandemic started last year, Ohio has recorded 1,061,907 total cases.

After months of declining cases and hospitalizations, the numbers started to climb in the last few weeks. However, Dewine said on Wednesday that Ohio is showing signs of cases plateauing and possibly even beginning to decrease again.

As of Friday, there were 1,250 COVID patients in Ohio hospitals. It’s the fourth consecutive day with fewer than 1,300 COVID patients.

Less than 20 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 at Springfield Regional Medical Center this week, Patterson said.

Ohio also recorded 89 deaths, according to ODH. The state updated COVID death data twice a week on Tuesday and Friday.

Throughout the pandemic, there have been 19,122 Ohioans have died of COVID-19, according to ODH.