State Rep. Paul Zeltwanger (R-Mason) told the Cincinnati Enquirer Thursday that he wants Ohio Health Director Amy Acton to resign from her position.
During Zeltwanger’s interview, he condemned Acton for not providing accurate information to the public and not reacting to data that went against the state’s lockdown measures.
Since the coronavirus came to Ohio, there have been numerous examples of Acton, Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) presenting flawed data or hiding certain data from Ohioans.
To start, when the Chinese virus first came to Ohio at the beginning of March, Acton said Ohio was acting as if 100,000 people in the state had the virus due to community spread.
When asked about how Acton came up with the “100,000” number, she said it was based on a guesstimate.
Furthermore, from March 16 to March 25, the ODH stopped providing the total number of tests it had conducted on its website. Once the state released the total numbers of tests, it showed that only 4.7 percent of people tested positive for COVID-19. During this ten-day span, Ohio had delayed its primary and put the state in lockdown.
At the end of March, DeWine and Acton claimed Ohio could see 10,000 daily new cases at some point in April. However, this never came true as this prediction was off by 700 percent on April 21 where the state only saw 1,317 new cases.
“When you miss things by that far in the non-government world — yeah, there’s accountability for that,” Zeltwanger told the Enquirer when referring to the daily new cases prediction.
Earlier in May, Acton claimed that around 20 percent of Ohio’s death toll could be contributed to nursing homes. However, soon it was discovered that the number was actually 79 percent as of May 21, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.
Zeltwanger told the Enquirer that the “buck” stops with DeWine and that “he needs to lead now.”
As of Saturday, Ohio has 32,639 cases with 2,149 deaths, according to ODH numbers.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Star News Digital Media. If you have any tips, email Zachery at [email protected]. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
Background Photo “Amy Acton Press Conference” by Mike DeWine.
