A seven-day-a-week mass COVID-19 vaccination site capable of delivering 6,000 shots a day will open at Cleveland State University later this month, with support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
CSU's Wolstein Center was chosen because of the high concentration of seniors and under-served populations in northeast Ohio, and will be operated by the Ohio Department of Health, the Ohio National Guard, and the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, with support from FEMA, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the city and county.
The clinic will open March 17th, and anyone eligible for the vaccine under Ohio's phased rollout program can get the shot. As of this week, that includes everyone age 60 and over, as well as several medical and occupational categories:
- People with Type 1 diabetes.
- Pregnant women.
- Bone marrow transplant recipients.
- People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
- Law enforcement and corrections officers, including active duty police officers, corrections staff, including probation and parole staff and active certificated firefighters.
- Child care services employees, including teachers, administrators and substitutes in Ohio’s Professional Registry who currently work in child care and pre-Kindergarten programs.
- Funeral services employees, including embalmers and morticians, funeral home directors, and crematory operators.
Doses of Pfizer and a yet-to-be-determined vaccine will be in addition to the regular weekly allotment distributed to over 12-hundred established providers. The eight-week clinic will be the largest response in Ohio to the pandemic.
DeWine also announced Friday that the state will be opening up 15 long-term mass vaccination clinics across Ohio to expand regional access to the vaccine. These clinics will not be part of the White House initiative and are strictly funded by the state.
The sites will be located in Lima, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Youngstown, Cincinnati, Chillicothe, Marietta, Wilmington and Zanesville.
In addition to those sites, four mobile vaccine clinics will also be making their way around other mid-size and rural areas of the state.
