Pa. shot data claims fail to add up

In a state where tens of thousands of elderly residents have perished from COVID-19, recent news releases from the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the governor’s office cast the state in an envious position when comes to its vaccine rollout.

In three statements last week, Pennsylvania said it was getting residents their shots against COVID-19 at a higher rate than every state in the nation with large senior populations.

“Pennsylvania is on par or doing a better job providing first doses than every other state with a large population of older adults,” one of the news releases said.

But records show Pennsylvania actually is doing far worse when it comes to vaccinating seniors and, in fact, is near the bottom for older people getting their doses.

Instead of being at the top, numbers from the federal government show the state ranks in the lowest tier — 46th — when it comes to the rate of people 65 and older who have received their first dose.

And when it comes to the percentage of seniors who are fully vaccinated, the state is 49th, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The claims by the state came as older residents struggled to get their vaccines, in some cases driving to Ohio, West Virginia and New Jersey, and in others navigating a system that, like others across the country, has been described as fragmented, confusing and slow.

“It’s not good,” said Diane Menio, a Philadelphia advocate for the elderly. “I was using the state map, and it was ridiculous. Every place I clicked on had no vaccine.”

In an interview with the Post-Gazette, officials of the health department and governor’s office said they based their figures on the overall population getting the vaccine and were unaware of how the state ranked among the elderly.

Sara Goulet, deputy press secretary for Gov. Tom Wolf, said, in future press releases, “Our goal is to provide more information.” She acknowledged the PostGazette’s analysis was accurate but said neither the governor’s office nor the health department believed the releases were misleading.

Pennsylvania does rank highly among other large states, including California and Texas, but not in vaccinating older people.

The press releases — sent out Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — followed announcements by Mr. Wolf and acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam that the vaccine rollout was underway “as the process accelerates and Pennsylvania outperforms its peer states.”

Bill Johnston-Walsh, state directorof AARP Pennsylvania, questioned why the state compared itself to other states with large senior populations when accuracy in the numbers is critical to seniors.

“This goes back to transparency,” he said. “I would love to know the true percentage when comparing to other states. I think that, especially the 65-plus, the older Pennsylvanians, they just want to know.”

For weeks, advocates for elderly people have been calling the health department and other agencies to speed up a distribution program created to initially get the vaccine to the most vulnerable groups, including older people, those with serious underlying medical conditions and health care workers.

For Candace Pilla, her attempt to get a vaccine appointment for her 81-yearold mother has been a long and frustrating process.

“My doctor didn’t have a clue. They have no information, so I started to call around to pharmacies, just wherever I can,” said Ms. Pilla, 60, of Rostraver. “We’ve come up with nothing. We’ve had zero luck.”

Since the onslaught of the pandemic last year, older adults have borne the brunt of the virus’s toll: In Pennsylvania, more than 22,000 seniors have died from the virus — about 88% of the state’s deaths, according to the CDC.

Though the rate of people getting the vaccine is increasing — about 61% of Pennsylvania’s seniors have received at least one dose — the state is still seven percentage points below the national rate for seniors.

In fact, of the state’s 2.4 million elderly residents, about 930,000 have not received a shot.

The Rev. Paul Abernathy, head of a Hill District program that sent “health deputies” into the neighborhood to bring people to clinics for shots, said he has been trying to line up appointments but has run into hurdles.

“We’ve seen clinics pop up. When they do pop up, it’s more like a fire drill, rather than a sustainable plan,” he said.

The reasons for the slow distribution run the gamut in Pennsylvania and nationally, from a limited supply of the vaccines to a patchwork system of getting appointments to a lack of information.

An informal survey last month by AARP Pennsylvania of more than 3,400 members found most had tried to get an appointment, but only 27% had been successful. “It is like the Wild West — totally decentralized and frustrating,” Gilda Kramer, of Montgomery County, was quoted in the AARP survey.

While Pennsylvania lags behind other states in getting the vaccine to older residents, it ranks in the middle of the pack among all states when it comes to getting doses to the general population.

In a press release Wednesday, Mr. Wolf said the pace of vaccinations was “accelerating each day. We have made tremendous progress, but we know we have more work to do.”

In an effort to distribute the doses, the health department said it would be shifting supplies to a smaller, more focused network of providers, those “who have demonstrated the ability to help us achieve our goal of getting as many individuals vaccinated as quickly and equitably as possible.”

The goal is to ensure the vast majority of Pennsylvanians get their shots, said state health department spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo.

“At some point, the supply is going to catch up with the demand,” he said, adding a supply of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine will help the state reach more people.

In comparing Pennsylvania’s overall vaccination rates favorably to other states with large senior populations, Mr. Ciccocioppo said the state wanted “to show that seniors are able to get appointments and get vaccinated.”

But most of the states the department said were lagging behind Pennsylvania, including Florida and Ohio, were doing better with their seniors.

For Pennsylvania to catch up to the rate of California, the largest state, it would have to vaccinate about 270,000 more seniors.

“There are probably more people who are frustrated than are not frustrated because it has been difficult,” Mr. Ciccocioppo acknowledged.

Ms. Menio, the elder advocate, said she knows firsthand the frustrations of getting a vaccine.

She’s 65, has an underlying condition and couldn’t land an appointment for a shot in her area. So, next week, she’s taking the twohour drive to Harrisburg from Philadelphia to get her second Pfizer dose.

“I think it’s just that it’s been haphazard,” she said. “There’s no one way to get a vaccine.”

Ms. Menio said she wasn’t surprised that the governor’s office was promoting Pennsylvania’s vaccine efforts in a positive way while not addressing its poor showing with the state’s elderly population.

“That’s their job, I guess,” she said.