Ohio food banks seek $25 million in emergency state funding
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Association of Foodbanks is asking for $25 million in emergency state assistance, and six inmates at the Cuyahoga County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19.
A look at coronavirus-related developments in Ohio on Friday:
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ECONOMY
The Ohio Association of Foodbanks asked for $25 million in emergency state assistance to respond to record-breaking requests for food distribution. Executive Director Lisa Hamler-Fugitt also encouraged private monetary contributions and urged Ohioans to stop hoarding food.
“If you have enough, please make sure that your family, friends and neighbors have the food that they need,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “Hunger is just six doors away, and it looks a whole lot like you and me.”
Food bank operators say as many as one in three clients are new to the food bank system since the pandemic hit.
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CARE
Chemical Abstracts Service, a Columbus-based chemical research clearinghouse, has released an open access dataset of chemical compounds with known or potential antiviral activity to help support research, data mining and analytics applications involving COVID-19. The nearly 50,000 chemical substances extracted from the clearinghouse’s proprietary registry of compounds are now available for download by scientists and other researchers.
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CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES
Six inmates from a single Cuyahoga County Corrections Center housing unit in Cleveland have tested positive and two inmates have suspected cases of COVID-19. All eight have been isolated.
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CASES
More than 2,900 Ohio cases are confirmed, with 81 deaths as of Thursday and more than 800 people hospitalized, officials reported. That doesn’t reflect all cases in Ohio, because the state limits testing to those who are hospitalized and to health care workers.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center said it has employees who have tested positive for COVID-19. It didn’t provide more details.
For most people, COVID-19 displays mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can be more severe, causing pneumonia or death.
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THE NEW NORMAL
The Ohio Department of Transportation is thanking its workers by lighting bridges in red, white and blue, including the George V. Voinovich Bridge in Cleveland, the Veterans Glass City Skyway in Toledo, and the Ashtabula Harbor Bridge. ODOT also says traffic is down nearly 60% across the state since March 29.
Most houses of worship have stopped in-person gatherings, including Roman Catholics, whose Ohio bishops this week suspended all services through May 3.
“The church is not the building,” said the Rev. Derek Terry of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ, speaking of his decision to move services online, according to WCPO-TV.
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Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati, Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, and Mark Gillispie in Cleveland contributed to this report.
