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Dracula’s castle ideal setting for COVID-19 jabs

BUCHAREST (AP) — At Dracula’s castle in picturesque Transylvania, Romanian doctors are offering a jab in the arm rather than a stake through the heart. A COVID-19 vaccination center has been set up on the periphery of Romania’s Bran Castle, which is purported to be the inspiration behind Dracula’s home in Bram Stoker’s 19th-century gothic novel “Dracula.” Every weekend through May “vaccination marathons” will be held just outside the storied 14th-century hilltop castle, where no appointment is needed, in an attempt to encourage people to protect themselves against ...

Ohio Valley Mall COVID clinics ending in late May

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — With demand for COVID-19 vaccination declining in Belmont County, the health department’s weekly shot clinic at the Ohio Valley Mall is expected to end May 20. After that, Belmont County Deputy Health Commissioner Robert Sproul said, health department staff likely will continue to set up clinics around Belmont County by request. “We’re going to try and go around the community,” Sproul said. “We’re going to try to reach out to different communities and different locations, so that way we can be in the community with the shot, so they wouldn’t have to ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Buckeye State residents receiving unemployment are required to look for work again. Beginning May 23, Ohioans will be required to resume weekly work-search activities as part of future applications for unemployment payments, Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Interim Director Matt Damschroder announced Monday. “Now that Ohioans have had the opportunity to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and can safely return to work, it only makes sense that we restore work-search requirements for everyone,” said Gov. Mike DeWine. “Ohio business owners are creating ...

Some states plan big spending with Biden’s aid, others wait

Though still awaiting money from the latest federal coronavirus relief act, some governors and state lawmakers already are making plans to add the multibillion-dollar boon to their budgets. Among their priorities: bailing out depleted unemployment accounts, expanding high-speed internet and ...

Asian American health workers fight virus and racist attacks

NEW YORK (AP) — Medical student Natty Jumreornvong has a vaccine and protective gear to shield her from the coronavirus. But she couldn't avoid exposure to the anti-Asian bigotry that pulsed to the surface after the pathogen was first identified in China. Psychiatry patients have called her by a racist slur for the disease, she said. A bystander spat at the Thai-born student to “go back to China” as she left a New York City hospital where she's training. And as she walked there in scrubs Feb. 15, a man came up to her, snarled “Chinese virus,” took her cellphone and dragged ...

Vaccine deserts: Some countries have no COVID-19 jabs at all

N'DJAMENA, Chad (AP) — At the small hospital where Dr. Oumaima Djarma works in Chad's capital, there are no debates over which coronavirus vaccine is the best. There are simply no vaccines at all. Not even for the doctors and nurses like her, who care for COVID-19 patients in Chad, one of the least-developed nations in the world where about one third of the country is engulfed by the Sahara desert. “I find it unfair and unjust, and it is something that saddens me,” the 33-year-old infectious diseases doctor says. “I don’t even have that choice. The first vaccine that comes ...