Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine spoke with PennLive Thursday about the effort to vaccinate state residents against COVID-19 and said, “We want to do more and we want to do better.”
In an interview with PennLive’s editorial board, Levine said she expects to soon announce new tactics toward that goal, including making vaccines available at retail pharmacies and holding vaccination clinics, including what she called “mass vaccination clinics.” The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency will be involved, she said.
Levine further said she will align Pennsylvania’s vaccination priorities with new ones announced by the federal government this week. The federal government is advising states to immediately make vaccine available to everyone over 65, plus people 16 and older who have chronic medical conditions.
That means vaccines may be offered to all Pennsylvania seniors much sooner than seemed likely at the beginning of the week, when the state was following a phased approach that focused on front-line health care workers and seniors in nursing homes. The state announced Thursday morning a temporary waiver which will allow people to get vaccinated at pharmacies without a prescription. However, it’s contingent on having a sufficient supply of vaccines.
Levine told PennLive Thursday morning she didn’t immediately know when vaccines will be offered to all Pennsylvanians over 65.
Noting the federal recommendation to do so came on Tuesday, Levine said, “What we’re trying to do is to figure out exactly how we’re going to do that, because it’s such a shift from what they were recommending before.”
Asked about when she expects vaccine to become available to everyone, Levine said, “It could be by the beginning of summer … but let’s say, optimistically, by the end of spring.”
Still, Levine stressed that getting vaccine to all who want it is a complicated task, and she expects it will take “well into fall” to complete groups such as healthy young adults, college students and children.
In the interview with PennLive’s editorial board, Levine was pressed on the success of Pennsylvania’s vaccine rollout — based on federal data, the state seems behind many others.
According to federal data as of Thursday morning, Pennsylvania has received more than one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine and has given out about 380,000 of those. Its rate of doses given, about 3 per 100 people, put it in the middle of the pack among the states. The leading state, West Virginia, has given more than twice as many doses, about 6.2 per 100 residents.
Levine said vaccination in Pennsylvania is a complicated process with, for example, Philadelphia conducting its own vaccination effort, and a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens handling vaccinations at long-term care facilities. She said it can take up to three days for administered doses to be reported. She further said the federal government lists vaccines as being distributed to Pennsylvania before it actually arrives, suggesting the figure of unused doses in the state, about 600,000 as of Thursday morning, isn’t that high.
Levine acknowledged Pennsylvania ranks “in the middle of the pack” in distributing vaccines.
But she also said, “I think that all the states are pretty much in the same boat.”
She also cited holiday delays — the national vaccination process began about a week before Christmas.
“But now in the New Year, both in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation, we are continuing to ramp up and do much better,” she said.
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