Montco dose allotment upped to 10,500 a week

NORRISTOWN >> While Montgomery County officials remain concerned about a surge of COVID-19 cases in the county, they received some welcome news from state officials — more vaccine is coming to the Southeast Pennsylvania region.

“I am very pleased and grateful to be able to tell you that Gov. Wolf and his team announced earlier today that 42,000 combined doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be delivered weekly to the county health departments in the four Southeast Pennsylvania counties,” county Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie

Arkoosh announced during a Wednesday news briefing.

The 42,000 additional doses will be shared by Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware counties. That means the Montgomery County Office of Public Health will receive about 10,500 more doses of vaccine each week. Currently, the county health department has been receiving about 5,850 weekly first doses.

“We don’t know when it’s arriving, but we understand it will be fairly soon and we will be ramping up our vaccine locations to increase the amount of doses that we’re giving at our sites every day,” Arkoosh said, referring to the additional doses. “The delivery of Montgomery County’s share of these doses will enable us to significantly accelerate the progression through our 1A list as well as more quickly vaccinate a number of essential frontline workers.”

The state remains in Phase 1A of the vaccine distribution plan, which includes those 65 and older, health care workers and anyone age 16 to 64 with specific medical conditions. As of Wednesday, the county had about 75,171 people remaining on the Phase 1A pre-registration vaccination list.

The additional doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine likely will allow the county to get through the 1A list in about a month.

Appointments are required to receive the vaccine. All those eligible for the vaccine in Phase 1A can pre-register to receive the vaccine through the county Office of Public Health. The pre-registration link can be found at www.montcopa. org/COVID-19 under the green vaccination information button.

Residents who don’t have internet access can call the county’s COVID-19 hotline at (833) 875-3967 to connect with a volunteer who can assist them in pre-registering for a vaccine.

The county Office of Public Health previously opened vaccination clinics at Norristown High School, at the Montgomery County Community College campus in Whitpain and at the Parkside Shopping Center, in the former Petco location, in Willow Grove.

In recent weeks, elected officials in the four Southeast Pennsylvania counties expressed concerns about the state’s proposal to open a regional site to distribute the Johnson & Johnson vaccine instead of considering a request to allocate the vaccine directly to each of the four counties.

Local officials were concerned that equitable distribution of the vaccine would be compromised if the state established a regional site operated by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The regional leaders argued the local counties have highly qualified public health and safety teams in place, high-volume locations secured, and more than 500,000 people already on waiting lists in the region to get their shots but just needed more supply.

“I just couldn’t be happier,” Arkoosh said about the state deciding to give vaccine directly to the four counties. “I am just so pleased that there’s acknowledgement that all four counties still have quite a few people on our 1A lists and we will be getting a very large amount of vaccine into our region and I think that will allow all four counties to within a matter of a month or so really move through our 1A lists.

“The bottom line is we needed more vaccine here in the Southeast and now we’re getting more vaccine. I couldn’t be happier about it and I look forward to a collaborative relationship going forward,” Arkoosh added when asked about the state’s decision.

The additional vaccine also will allow county health officials to ramp up an ongoing mobile vaccine program for vulnerable senior citizens who can’t get to a vaccination site and help vaccinate those experiencing homelessness in the county.

On Wednesday, state officials said those in Phase 1B of the vaccine distribution plan will be eligible to make appointments on April 5 and one week later, on April 12, the state will move to Phase 1C. State officials said they also plan to meet President Joe Biden’s May 1 deadline for all eligible adults to have an appointment for a vaccine.

“But I just want to remind everyone, eligibility does not necessarily mean that we have vaccine available for you on that day that you become eligible. But we should in reasonably short order,” Arkoosh explained.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported on Wednesday that 97,515 county residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, receiving either the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine or both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, during the ongoing Phase 1A of the state’s vaccine distribution program. Another 156,064 county residents have received a first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, according to state data.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses to achieve optimum protection.

While vaccine availability is about to increase in the county, so are the number of positive coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

“We remain in a very serious situation with new cases of COVID-19 in our community. All of our numbers continue to go in the wrong direction. This week, all of our key indicators are up again,” Arkoosh said. “I’m very concerned about the direction this pandemic is going.”

The 204 daily new positive COVID-19 cases reported in the county on Wednesday brought the county’s total number of positive cases to 51,123 since March 7, 2020, when the first two cases of the virus were identified in the county. The county is currently averaging about 186 new positive cases a day.

Officials also reported one additional COVID-19 death on Wednesday, bringing the county’s death toll to 1,262 since the pandemic began a year ago.

There were 177 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the county’s nine hospitals on Wednesday, up from 137 a week ago. Sixteen of the current patients required respirators, according to the latest hospitalization data.

According to the latest county data, the overall 14-day COVID-19 positivity rate for the county, as of March 25, was 6.01% which was an increase from the 5.21% positivity rate recorded during the previous 14-day period ending March 18.

Health officials believe a positivity rate below 5% indicates a county is suppressing the spread of the virus.

“We are absolutely not out of the woods yet,” Arkoosh said.

“While we will soon be able to rapidly increase vaccine distribution, in the meantime, it is critically important that every one of us - vaccinated or not - continues to wear masks and maintain social distancing when outside of our homes. We are so close to the end. Please stick with these important measures to keep everyone who is not vaccinated safe until we are able to vaccinate everyone who wants to be vaccinated,” Arkoosh added.

“We don’t know when it’s arriving, but we understand it will be fairly soon and we will be ramping up our vaccine locations to increase the amount of doses that we’re giving at our sites every day.” — Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Valerie Arkoosh