FLOODGATES OPEN
DELCO SEES A MASSIVE NEW INFUSION OF VACCINES
Delaware County has turned a tide.
What for months and months looked like a vast, bleak frontier on the COVID vaccine front for Delaware County, and all the Philadelphia suburbs, has had a dramatic change of scenery - at least when it comes to the most recent allotment.
While the state has been distributing both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine since December, it’s been very slow coming to this area as state officials directed much of it to less populated parts of Pennsylvania.
Now, Delaware County officials recently announced a surge of vaccine being sent here - with the ability to be vaccinating up to 20,000 county residents a week.
“We are happy with the recent decisions by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Acting Secretary (Alison) Beam, and we’re excited that this significant increase in the vaccine supply allocated to Delaware County — which more than doubles the doses we’re receiving — will prove to be a turning point in this long battle with COVID,” Delaware County Council Chairman Brian Zidek said.
Last week alone, the Pennsylvania Department of Health sent Delaware County 7,000 Moderna doses and 2,340 Pfizer doses along with a guarantee that Delco, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery would each be receiving 10,500 Johnson & Johnson doses on a weekly basis going forward.
“The State Department of Health’s decision to send the J&J vaccine directly to the county will be a huge help in enabling the County to vaccinate some of our most vulnerable residents, including those who are homebound, homeless, or incarcerated,” county Councilwoman Christine Reuther said.
In addition, Delaware County will now be the single largest dispenser of COVID vaccines from this point as they receive doses directly from the state. There are many vaccine providers in Delaware County and most of them are private, such as health systems, Rite Aids, CVS’s and other independent pharmacies.
Two factors are driving the spike in vaccine doses being sent to the region.
First, vaccine production by the manufacturers - Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson - has continued to increase significantly. Last Monday, the Biden administration set a goal of having 200 million shots by the president’s 100th day. The president also said that a record number of 33 million doses of vaccine will be made available to vaccinators this week.
In mid-March, the president announced the procurement of 100 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines and included $20 billion in the American Rescue Plan for vaccine production and distribution.
“(W)e’re in the life and death race for the virus that is spreading quickly with cases rising again,” Biden said as he stressed the importance of continuing to observe precautions. “New variants are spreading. And sadly, some of the reckless behavior we’ve seen on television over the past few weeks means that more new cases are to come in the weeks ahead ... With vaccines, there’s hope.”
Secondly, the state dropped its insistence for one state-run Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency site in the Delaware Valley.
Last month, the state Department of Health asked Delaware, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery counties to pick one site that would be run by the state and serve all four counties. Officials from these four counties submitted an alternate plan to have one vaccination site in each of the four counties but state officials denied that request, instead telling the counties they could pick two sites of which the state would pick one where 42,000 doses would be administered weekly.
Then, last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Health unexpectedly reversed its decision and adopted the four counties’ plan in which each of the four would be responsible for the large-scale vaccinations in their geographical boundary - a move that is sending the thousands of vaccines to this region of the commonwealth.
That reversal juxtaposes the reality of Delaware County in February when the county was receiving 1,000 doses a week - and one week received no doses at all - even as vaccine doses were sent to other parts of the state.
For months, Delaware County officials have been prepared to distribute vaccine.
The county has been administering the vaccine at the Delaware County Wellness Center in Yeadon, the Aston Community Center, the Keystone First Wellness Center in Chester, Penn Medicine at Radnor and Springfield Hospital.
In mid-February, county officials unveiled a comprehensive plan to vaccine dissemination, once doses were received here en masse.
“The increased supply promised by Acting Secretary Beam will enable us to open our long-planned community-based mass vaccination site, which we will operate in addition to our five county-based vaccination sites that are already operating at full-capacity and have been doing an amazing job for months,” county Councilwoman Elaine Paul Schaefer said.
Plans included that the county Wellness Center, the Aston Community Center, Keystone First Wellness Center and Springfield Hospital could be expanded to provide shots 12 hours a day, seven days a week with the use of county employees, contractors and hundreds of Medical Reserve Corps volunteers.
Sites identified that could provide 3,125 shots a weekend included Garnet Valley High School, Ridley Park High School, Upper Darby High School and Radnor High School. More than 3,000 shots have already been distributed at Upper Darby High School in multiple pop-up vaccination efforts during weekends in March.
Other potential locations included the Upland Municipal Center, which is anticipated to be able to provide 600 doses per week, and possibly the Delaware County Community College, where 10,000 doses could be provided over a weekend. Neither
site has been activated for this large-scale distribution yet.
Hundreds of Medical Reserve Corps volunteers have been trained and have been ready to assist the county with this effort.
“County council is confident we’re up to the task at hand, and we are so grateful for the amazing work being done by our COVID-19 Task Force, Delaware County Emergency Services, the Delaware County Medical Reserve Corps and the Citizen Corps and their thousands of volunteers, not to mention the various departments and agencies that have helped us already vaccinate tens of thousands of people here in the County,” council Vice Chairman Dr. Monica Taylor said.
On Friday, the state Department of Health reported that 152,579 Delaware County residents had
received their first dose and that 79,638 county residents had received both doses, making them fully vaccinated against COVID-19. There are more than 560,000 residents in Delaware County.
Also as of Friday, 42,148 county residents had tested positive for coronavirus and 1,346 had died as a result. A recovery rate of 90.3 percent had been reported.
County officials were grateful for the vaccines and the impact it can have in Delaware County.
“This is a turning point. We appreciate that the Pennsylvania Department of Health was willing to listen to our needs and trust our medical countermeasures plans,” county Councilman Kevin Madden said, “and we are grateful to our legislative delegation for advocating for this result.”