Vaccine rollout frustrates officials

NORRISTOWN >> Elected officials in four Southeast Pennsylvania counties continue to express frustration with the state’s allocation of COVID-19 vaccine to the region and called for more transparency from state health officials about the vaccine rollout.

In a joint statement issued on Monday by officials from Montgomery, Chester, Delaware and Bucks counties, the leaders said a one-hour virtual meeting they had with the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Sunday was “both disappointing and frustrating.”

“There remains a lack of transparency on the total doses that have come to our counties from every source. Therefore, we have no way to assess how the data pre

sented to us today was calculated, and how those calculations have been used to determine the number of doses that have been allocated to our four counties,” the leaders wrote in the joint statement.

“Additionally, we were not given any indication of the plan to make up acknowledged shortfalls to certain counties going forward,” the leaders wrote.

Commissioners, council members and state legislators representing the four counties met for an hour on Sunday with Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam and other officials of Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to discuss and remedy what they claim are inequalities in the state’s allocation of vaccine to the region.

Officials said the meeting was arranged after The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Feb. 27 that the four suburban counties have received far lower state allocations of vaccine than their substantial populations’ merit.

Citing the Inquirer article, officials claimed all four counties consistently have received far smaller amounts of vaccine from the state health department than requested, while lesspopulated counties in the state have received disproportionately large amounts of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The leaders claimed smaller-than-expected allocations in the region have led to long waiting lists and cancellation of second-dose appointments that had been scheduled for weeks, creating understandable frustration and anger among citizens.

County officials said Beam did confirm that no county will move to vaccinate people in Phase 1B of the state’s vaccine distribution plan before sufficient vaccine has been made available to all counties to fully vaccinate residents in Phase 1A who wish to be vaccinated – with the exception of teachers and educational support personnel who are directly receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the state.

The local leaders called upon Beam “to swiftly” do the following:

• Create a publicly available chart showing the amount of vaccine from all sources, including federal partnerships, that has been delivered to each county each month; a description of the “County Index” that the Department of Health is currently using to allocate doses to each county; and how the index has been applied to each county since it came into use in January.

• Explain how and when counties that are lagging in vaccine delivery will receive additional vaccine.

• Explain how vaccine providers will be monitored going forward to ensure that no vaccine provider moves on to vaccinate 1B individuals (beyond the teachers and educational support personnel) until all counties in the commonwealth have received sufficient vaccine to vaccinate their 1A population.

Additionally, the Republican Southeast House delegation on Monday demanded the Wolf administration give the responsibility for allocating and distributing the COVID-19 vaccine to the Pennsylvania National Guard.

“There are people throughout Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties who should have already been vaccinated if the administration had followed an equitable distribution formula,” said Rep. Frank Farry, the Republican who represents the 142nd District in Bucks County. “The planning of this distribution has lacked transparency; it’s been a disaster.

The National Guard specializes in logistics, and that’s how we fix this moving forward.”

The delegation also wants the National Guard to base the allocation model on population, particularly the population of those eligible under Phase 1A, those over 65 and with serious health issues.

The delegation made its decision to call on the National Guard after the meeting with administration officials on Sunday. Delegation officials claimed the health department’s formula for distributing vaccine is “convoluted and arbitrary” and not based on science and has left the Southeast region short of vaccines based on the area’s population.

In addition to Farry, the GOP House members from the southeast region who were involved in the meeting included: Martina White; Meghan Schroeder; Wendi Thomas; Todd Stephens; Tracy Pennycuick; Craig Staats; KC Tomlinson; Shelby Labs; Todd Polinchock; Tim Hennessey; John Lawrence; Chris Quinn; and Craig Williams.

Last week, the Bucks County delegation unveiled House Bill 756, which would require COVID-19 vaccines be distributed to counties based on population.

The bill would also give local health departments a say in the distribution of the vaccine and make certain the vaccines get to the people within a county who are most at risk. This would reduce confusion as people would no longer have to sign up on multiple websites, lawmakers said.

The bill would require the state Department of Health to compensate the counties for any existing shortfalls in the number of vaccines already distributed.

“We hope House Bill 756 could be a guide for the National Guard in getting the vaccine into the arms of those who need it most,” Farry said.

During an interview last week, Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh called for increased transparency from state health officials.

“I think…it’s probably fair to say that none of us understand what the (vaccine) allocation algorithm is for the Southeastern Pennsylvania counties. So, I’m looking for more transparency. I’m looking to understand how these allocation decisions are being made. I’m hoping that once that information is given to us and we understand it, we will be able to better advocate for more doses here to our region,” Arkoosh said.

Arkoosh said Southeast Pennsylvania provides “a very substantial contribution” to the state’s revenue and tax base, a bigger contribution than its proportion of the population.

“Everybody who lives here knows that people travel between our counties, for work, for recreation and all sorts of activities, and that we need to get the southeast back as an entity, as a whole, as a whole region, in order to get our economic engine back on track here for the entire commonwealth,” Arkoosh said.

“So, I do not understand why we are not getting more doses. We are ready to give more. We should be getting more and I hope very soon that we will be getting more,” Arkoosh added.