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Gov. Mike DeWine lays out COVID-19 vaccination plan for Ohio's school employees

Every public school in the state except one has agreed to go back to in-person learning by March 1.

CEDARVILLE, Ohio — The state of Ohio is preparing to enter a new phase of the COVID-19 vaccination rollout process soon as the state's school employees will start to receive doses.

Although Gov. Mike DeWine says the state will release its official vaccination plan for schools on Friday, he provided some details during his coronavirus briefing on Thursday. 

First off, DeWine announced that every public school in the state except one has agreed to go back to in-person learning by March 1. DeWine did not specify which school opted not to sign the agreement.

Those schools who will start to receive vaccines next week have already been notified. On Friday, the state will notify all other schools as to which week they will receive their vaccinations. 

"To help schools return safely to in-person education, we have prioritized vaccinating K-12 school employees," DeWine said. "This includes teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians - anyone who is in that school building."

DeWine says most K-12 school staff in a county will be vaccinated within seven days. "The goal is to maximize the capacity of local vaccination partners. We have a limited supply of vaccine," he added. "We have pulled vaccine from our statewide allocation specifically for vaccinating our K-12 staff. There just isn’t enough to do every school in the first week. We must be able to also vaccinate older Ohioans in February."

The state is planning to allocate roughly 100,000 vaccines for elderly Ohioans each week and 55,000 for school employees. 

The governor added that local educational service centers are working with local health departments and retail pharmacies to facilitate vaccinations that are convenient for school staff.

"The plan we’ll announce will ensure that counties can vaccinate the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time," DeWine added.

You can see the state's list of which districts will receive the COVID-19 vaccine next week below:

The work to vaccinate Ohio's school employees comes amid new data that shows more than 60% of the state's districts are back to full, in-person learning. That equates to 45.8% of Ohio's students. 30% of the districts in the state are using partial/hybrid learning, while 8.2% are staying at full remote.

You can watch Thursday's entire briefing in the player below:

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