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'The crisis is dire': Ohio National Guard to begin deployment at state's medical facilities on Thursday

Ohio Adjutant General Maj. Gen. John Harris says most of the over 1,000 national guard members will be sent to Northeast Ohio hospitals.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — With another surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations taking place across the state, more than a thousand members of the Ohio National Guard have been called up to assist.

On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. John C. Harris Jr., Ohio Adjutant General, provided an update on the deployment of the national guard in the state's hospitals.150 of the National Guard members include "highly trained medical personnel, nurses and EMTs." The other 900 non-medical members will deal with a variety of other tasks that "will involve transport within the hospital, food and the environmental work that goes on in hospitals."

The Ohio National Guard's placement in the hospitals will begin on Thursday and continue until further notice.

Maj. Gen. Harris said most of the Ohio National Guard's initial focus will be at hospitals in Cleveland, Akron, and Canton. "The crisis is so dire there right now," he told reporters during a Tuesday briefing. 

In addition, the Ohio National Guard is working with the Ohio Department of Health to staff a COVID-19 drive-thru testing center in the garage of the W.O. Walker Building in Cleveland's University Circle. Due to high demand, the testing center stopped accepting patients early on Tuesday.

"The fact that it was so overwhelmed, so quickly, is a great indication of how extreme the situation is," Harris added. "The line was cut down after three hours because it was disrupting traffic."

Gen. Harris added that the Ohio National Guard will look at several options going forward to enable the test center run more efficiently, including a potential relocation or opening up an additional site. "Everything is on the table," he said during the briefing. "We don't want to be a disruption downtown."

During Tuesday's briefing, Gen. Harris stated that just over half of Army National Guard members in the state are fully vaccinated, saying the low rate degrades “our ability to respond with maximum capability.” The U.S. military has set a June 30 deadline for all Army National Guard members to be fully vaccinated. Harris says he has set a March 31 deadline for Ohio.

Ohio has the fifth largest National Guard contingent in the U.S. with more than 11,000 Army National Guard members and nearly 5,000 Air National Guard members.

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You can watch Gen. Harris' briefing from Tuesday in the player below:

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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