By Debbie Rogers
The Wood County Health Department has received a $2.3 million COVID grant from the Ohio Department of Health.
It’s not the pandemic-related funding of the past, which would address vaccines and masks, said Health Commissioner Ben Robison.
“It’s meant to help to mitigate the risk of infectious disease: COVID, measles and monkeypox,” he said after Thursday’s board of health meeting.
The grant will fund several contractors.
“We have some health education activities that will help us to make people aware of how to mitigate disease,” Robison said.
“This is money that was really funded and put in place years ago,” he said. “As we have seen the downturn in COVID impacts and the end of the emergency, we really see this as an opportunity to continue the COVID recovery process.
“The grant that we applied for really had that in mind,” Robison said.
During Thursday’s meeting, board member Cathy Nelson asked if there has been an uptick in COVID cases across the county, because of the new version of omicron, EG.5.
“We are seeing an increase in hospitalizations. We’ve seen an increase in cases,” Robison said.
There will be challenges with COVID coming up, he said. The vaccine has been fully commercialized.
“We have not had to buy the vaccine, up until now,” he said.
Any upcoming vaccine campaign will target at-risk groups, Robison said.
