Pa. sounds alarm on coronavirus vaccine hesitancy
A growing number of unfilled appointments and low uptake among nursing home workers are early signs that vaccine hesitancy is becoming an issue in Pennsylvania, prompting state officials to sound the alarm Friday and urge residents to get their COVID-19 shots as quickly as possible.
After months of demand outstripping supply, vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are more readily available, and the Wolf administration said the challenge now is to assuage the concerns of people who are reluctant to get it.
Gov. Tom Wolf and state health officials on Friday toured a community vaccination clinic in Hershey that had openings. In nearby Lebanon
County, a mass vaccination clinic reported hundreds of available slots, something that might have been unthinkable weeks ago when providers were swamped with requests but didn’t have enough doses to give out.
“The appointment availability does give us cause for concern because it’s indicative of hesitancy, which really is the challenge to come,” said Alison Beam, the state’s acting health secretary, who joined Wolf at a news conference.
She said the fact that nearly half of Pennsylvania’s nursing home workers have declined the vaccine is further evidence of “how far we have to go and how much of a challenge overcoming this vaccine hesitancy will be in the near future.”
Only 53% of staff in skilled nursing facilities have opted to get the vaccine, according to Health Department data, even though the shots have been available to them for months.
With supplies increasing, the state expanded eligibility to everyone aged 16 and older this week. To date, Pennsylvania has vaccinated more than 40% of its eligible population, not including Philadelphia, which gets its supply directly from the federal government and runs its own program.
Philadelphia reported Friday that its hospitals, pharmacies and mass vaccination sites are also suddenly having difficulty filling open slots, prompting city officials to abandon its phased rollout in favor of universal eligibility days ahead of schedule.
“It is a sign that the people who are most eager to get the vaccine have probably already been vaccinated,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the city health commissioner. Now, he said, “we will have to work harder to persuade people to be vaccinated and make it easy for them.”
The reasons why some people remain hesitant tend to be similar across demographic, geographic and political groups, said state Health Department spokesperson Maggi Barton, and include “safety, efficacy and benefits for a post-vaccine world.”
While the decision to get vaccinate or not remains a personal one, she said, the state is “arming our communities with vaccine facts because good information leads to good decisions.”