MIAMI VALLEY — As the Public Health - Dayton & Montgomery County vaccine clinic prepared to open Tuesday, at least 500 vaccination appointments were still available online, but quickly filled after the county announced an expansion to 40 and up ahead of Friday’s statewide expansion.
In addition to Tuesday’s clinic, the county also has one scheduled for Thursday, where over 1,850 vaccine appointments were still available online Tuesday morning. Less than 60 appointments remained at 1:40 p.m.
As the struggle to fill appointments for this week continued, Gov. Mike DeWine announced a massive expansion to vaccine eligibility beginning Friday. Those Ohioans age 40 and older, along with those with cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, heart disease and obesity can start getting shots on Friday.
>> Miami Valley vaccines: All Ohioans 16+ eligible to get vaccine March 29; how to register
All Ohioans age 16 and older can get vaccinations starting March 29.
DeWine announced over the weekend that several of the counties he visited clinics in said they were ready to move to age 40 and older. After meeting with health departments across the state Tuesday morning, the Governor announced the expansion at the mass vaccination clinic in Cleveland around 10:30 a.m.
Cleveland State University is holding the state’s first mass vaccination site, with about 210,000 Ohioans getting vaccinated at the site in the coming weeks.
Dayton will join in becoming a host for a mass vaccination clinic in the coming weeks at the Dayton Convention Center, but that site will eventually move.
“Currently, we’re here at the convention center through mid-April. And due to construction at the convention center, some renovations they want to do, we’re going to be moving out sometime mid-April to a new location,” said Public Health spokesman Dan Suffoletto. “We haven’t locked down that location yet. But once we do, we’ll make that public and we will provide information about how people can register at that location as well.”
Suffoletto said the county is already vaccinating a number of residents at each of its clinics.
“I will say even though we’re transitioning to what’s called ‘mass vaccination,’ we’re still doing a very large number right now,” he said. “We’re looking at 3,000 a day so that’s a lot. So depending on the number of doses we get, it may mean not necessarily more doses in one day but more days. So we might do more days a week, or we could expand the hours on a given day.”
Montgomery County was not the only county facing difficulty filling appointments with less than 24 hours until clinics are scheduled to open.
Butler County announced Tuesday morning that it still has appointment slots available for Wednesday and Friday clinics at the Butler County Fairgrounds.
Mercer County said it too had openings for its clinic at the Mercer County Fairgrounds on Wednesday, but were full by lunch after expanding eligibility early.
Clinton County’s vaccine clinic scheduled for today also had more than 50 appointments available still on its website.
Clark County Combined Health District had schedules full for its Wednesday clinic, however Thursday’s clinic still had openings and registration also was available on each of next week’s clinic dates.
Preble County Public Health still had 179 doses of vaccine available for appointments for its Thursday clinic and several were also still available for a clinic on Tuesday.
Champaign County Public Health showed it still had over 100 doses of vaccine available for appointments on Thursday.
Public Health departments are not the only agencies administering the vaccine across the Miami Valley. Both Premier Health and Kettering Health Network also have been scheduling appointments. All of Premier Health’s clinics for this week have filled and Kettering Health showed several appointments available for its clinics at Grace United Methodist Church on the corner of Salem Avenue and Harvard Boulevard.
Cox Media Group
