People eligible for vaccine still struggle to get in line
When the Pennsylvania Department of Health reduced the age to 65 from 70 for people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, Peggy Matthis quickly got online.
Ms. Matthis, 67, said she was prepared to drive anywhere within 50 miles of her home in South Park to get shots for herself and her husband, Fred, a retired medical implant designer.
Her first stop was the Allegheny County Health Department’s website, where she hoped to score appointments at its Monroeville vaccination center. But all the spots were quickly filled, which could only be learned after plowing through a complex form that required registrants to upload front and back images of their health insurance cards — this despite the fact that the shots are free, courtesy of the federal government.
She then tried online sign-up websites that were posted by two hospitals, Giant Eagle and other pharmacies, which also led nowhere. Like thousands of other Pennsylvanians, Ms. Matthis is still trying to get vaccinated.
“It’s absolutely a mess,” said the retired personal care home worker. “I’m very concerned if my husband would get COVID-19 because I don’t think he would survive. It’s been very frustrating.”
Pennsylvania’s distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine — which has been marked by serum shortages, shifting eligibility criteria and fragmented registration — has stranded thousands who are trying to simply get in line.
Moreover, the complexities of the many registration platforms, which require computer savvy and internet access, are leaving behind some of the most vulnerable people to the disease, including those who live in Pittsburgh’s poorest neighborhoods.
“As we’ve rolled out the vaccine, it hasn’t been done in an equitable way,” said the Rev. Paul Abernathy,
“In fairness to the health departments, they’re not used to having that many people on their website. There’s just a huge demand for the vaccine.” — Albert Wright, WVU Medicine president
founder and CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project, a Hill District-based group that trains public health volunteers to work in poor neighborhoods.
“A lot of people don’t know how to sign up. How and when people in these communities will get vaccinated is a big question.”
Even though those who are Black, Hispanic and Native American die at nearly three times the rate of white Americans from COVID-19, Black people were significantly underrepresented among those vaccinated as of Jan. 14, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. The disparity was especially stark in Pennsylvania, where 1.2% of the white population had been vaccinated compared with 0.3% of the Black population.
Rev. Abernathy called Pennsylvania’s vaccination disparity “abysmal.”
A Jan. 28 report by the Government Accountability Office said the blame for the widespread problems and confusion in vaccine distribution should be shifted to the federal gov- ernment for failing to implement a “national plan for distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccine” and leaving each state to come up with its own plan.
Still, Pennsylvania — which was among 16 states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said had administered less than half the vaccine the state had received as of Jan. 28 — spends less per resident on public health than surrounding states, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News and the Associated Press.
Pennsylvania spends just $39 per person annually on public health, compared with $32 in Louisiana, the lowest in the nation, and $263 in Delaware, the highest.
But public health officials have complained that there is simply not enough vaccine to meet the need yet.
Pennsylvania, for example, was scheduled the first week of February to receive 160,000 doses of the COVID19 vaccine for people getting their first shots — a fraction of the first-time 700,000 doses that have been requested, state Department of Health spokeswoman April Hutcheson said Friday.
And organizing vaccination clinics has been hampered by the last-minute notices that the state receives for deliveries of vaccine shipments from the federal government.
“We don’t know what we get until we get it,” Ms. Hutcheson said during a news briefing.
Neither Allegheny Health Network nor UPMC — the two largest health systems in the Pittsburgh area — are vaccinating people 65 and older, leaving only the Allegheny County Health Department and some private pharmacies giving shots to people of that age, which reflects state and federal age guidelines.
AHN temporarily suspended its vaccine sign-up website Jan. 21, and UPMC is restricting shots to health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
Pennsylvania’s neighbor West Virginia, which spends $105 for each resident annually for public health, has taken a different approach to getting everybody vaccinated.
Morgantown-based WVU Medicine, which has 20 hospitals, created an online registration site and toll-free telephone number that can be used by anyone in the state to schedule a time to get vaccinated, health system President and CEO Albert Wright said.
A centralized sign-up site works because “you don’t have patients signing up on multiple wait lists; there’s no confusion as to whom I’m calling,” he said.
WVU Medicine also reached out to that state’s health department and the nearby rival Mon Health System as collaborators in opening a vaccination supersite inside an 80,000square-foot former Sears store in the Morgantown Mall. People 65 and older qualify in the state, as do teachers over 50.
Within 10 days of opening Jan. 19, nearly 16,000 people had signed up for the shots, Mr. Wright said.
Starting Jan. 25 and continuing for the next few weeks, the online vaccine registry will be moved to an online platform created by Burlington, Mass.-based software company Everbridge Inc. under contract with the state.
West Virginia, like every state, says its vaccine supply from the federal government has been inadequate. But when supplies expand, the new clinic will be able to inoculate 8,000 people a day, six days a week, Mr. Wright said.
Unlike Pennsylvania, West Virginia has health departments in every county that can reach residents with the vaccine in rural areas who can’t make it to Morgantown, Mr. Wright said. Plans are underway to use the National Guard and mobile units to get into hard-to-reach areas of the state.
Mr. Wright said it makes sense that a hospital system would set up the vaccine registry. County health departments just don’t have the resources, he said. Hospitals have the online heft needed to run centralized vaccination registries.
“In fairness to the health departments, they’re not used to having that many people on their website,” he said. “There’s just a huge demand for this vaccine.”