Lancaster County ranks 14th among Pennsylvania’s 67 counties for residents receiving last season’s updated COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report using federal data collected through May 2023.
The 93,116 people in Lancaster County who received the bivalent booster — which targeted the original strain of the virus along with Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5 — represent 17.1% of the county’s population, according to the report.
That number is down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tally of 63.7% of the Lancaster County population receiving both doses of the initial vaccines, a decrease local doctors attribute to the political environment, public fatigue over COVID and people who have contracted the virus thinking they are protected.
The report examining how the pandemic impacted the state and its health care system was released by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council in partnership with the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania. The report used data from the CDC.
With 142,679 people, or 27.2% of its population, receiving the bivalent booster, neighboring Chester County ranks second statewide, according to the report. Lancaster’s other four neighboring counties ranked 11th (Dauphin), 18th (York), 23rd (Berks), and 26th (Lebanon). Montour County, with 28.7% of its population boosted, was No. 1 in the state. (Berks was tied with Sullivan County, while Lebanon was tied with Fayette, Warren and Wayne counties.)
According to the CDC data, 49,216 people in Dauphin County, or 17.7% of its population, received the bivalent booster. In York County it was 72,755 people, or 16.2% of its population; in Berks County it was 63,523 people, or 15.1% of its population; and in Lebanon County it was 19,978 people, or 14.1% of its population.
In the United States, 56,478,510 people, or 17.0% of the population, received the bivalent booster, while in Pennsylvania, 2,413,787 people, or 18.9% of the population, got the vaccine, according to the CDC.
The bivalent booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have since been discontinued and replaced by versions that target a single variant of omicron called XBB.1.5. The CDC recommends the latest updated vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax to protect against serious illness from the COVID-19 virus.
After the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration ended on May 11, 2023, the CDC changed how it tracks COVID-19 metrics. As a result, county-by-county vaccination rates are not available for the updated COVID-19 vaccines that the Food and Drug Administration authorized in 2023.
Vaccine interest wanes
The Park City Center mass vaccination site helped people get through the primary vaccine series. But after people either had the initial shots or gained natural immunity, there was less interest in getting vaccinated, said Dr. Michael Ripchinski, chief physician executive at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health.
More than 90,000 people were vaccinated at the Park City Center site, which operated out of the former Bon-Ton store from March 10, 2021, to June 30, 2021.
Vaccine acceptance has been poor since the 2022 authorization of the bivalent boosters, said Dr. Eugene Curley, medical director of infectious disease medicine at WellSpan Health. He said this issue is national, not local.
“Unfortunately what we’ve seen over time through the pandemic is we had pretty high vaccine acceptance numbers when the vaccines first got approved,” Curley said. “That has continued to decrease over time, unfortunately.”
Cost and access are not the reason for low vaccination rates, said Curley, who is based in York County. Instead, he attributes it to politicization of the vaccine, COVID-19 fatigue and a lack of interest from people who have had the virus multiple times.
Curley stressed the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, noting that they’re FDA approved and backed by strong data. While community members had questions about safety when the shots were first authorized, he said, “that should no longer be a question today in 2024.”
While the CDC and the state Department of Health no longer collect county-level data on vaccination, estimates are available for how many people have had the most recent shot in Pennsylvania. Based on information from an ongoing cellphone survey, the CDC says that around 24.9% of Pennsylvanian adults outside of Philadelphia had the 2023-24 shot as of the week ending March 2.
These numbers are just estimates, and the CDC website notes the potential for error. For example, those who respond to the survey might be more likely to be vaccinated than those who don’t respond, according to the CDC. And people may make errors when reporting their own vaccination status.
