Despite COVID-19 case surge, DeWine won’t bring back mandates

COLUMBUS — With COVID-19 cases surging again in Ohio because of the delta variant, Gov. Mike DeWine told CNN on Sunday that he has no plans to bring back mandates on masks or crowds.

During Sunday's "State of the Union," host Jake Tapper asked the Republican governor, who faces a primary challenge next year, if he is considering bringing "back mandates like capacity restrictions or distancing requirements of businesses."

DeWine, who was one of the first governors in the nation in 2020 to take action against the spread of the coronavirus, said he has no plans to bring back mandates.

Instead, DeWine said his mission is to get more Ohioans vaccinated.

"Sixty percent of adults have been vaccinated," DeWine said, referring to those who have at least one dose. "If you look at those 12 and above, which we think is probably a better measurement, we're at almost 58 percent. So we certainly, as you say, have room to grow.

"We think we can continue to get more people vaccinated."

DeWine pointed out that Ohio's vaccination rate is up.

"We have had a significant increase in vaccination in the last week or so," DeWine said. "I think it's the fear of the delta variant is certainly one of the causes."

Ohio's new coronavirus cases are way up. On Wednesday, the state reported more than 1,000 new confirmed COVID-19 cases for the first time in 11 weeks.

On Thursday, Ohio's two-week rate of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people — the metric once used by DeWine to target the state's reopening — surpassed 50 per 100,000 for the first time since May.

DeWine said the biggest vaccination increase is in rural counties.

"We have also started a program to really focus on Medicaid members," DeWine said. "When we started [vaccinations] in January, we really focused on Medicaid members who were in nursing homes and had very, very good success. But what we saw was that the rest of the Medicaid population was really undervaccinated compared to the general population.



"So we have started a few weeks ago an incentive. It's $100 to help people who are on Medicaid."

DeWine said the state may soon follow the lead of the Columbus Health Department to use census data to find "unvaccinated neighborhoods."

As for schools that reopen later this month, DeWine said Ohio is making only recommendations on masks.



"We leave it up to the local schools, 600 and some local schools," DeWine said. "Most of these kids are unvaccinated. And we had great success last winter, last school year. We saw virtually no spread in the classroom, when all the kids were wearing masks. So we recommend, strong recommendation to our schools, that they do that. ... Some will not."



DeWine estimated that more than 100,000 Ohioans received at least one dose of a vaccine to qualify for the recent Vax-a-Million lottery that awarded $1 million prizes to adults and scholarships to students.

"So we think well over 100,000 extra people were vaccinated, at a minimum, because of that who either would not have been vaccinated or who would have delayed vaccination," DeWine said. "So it was very, very successful. It was something that worked. And we're glad we did it."

This story was originally published August 1, 2021 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Despite COVID-19 case surge, DeWine won’t bring back mandates."