The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Opening Willow Grove vaccination site hindered by limited supply of vaccine
NORRISTOWN >> As Montgomery County officials continue to express frustration with the state’s allocation of COVID-19 vaccine to the region, they indicated that because of the limited supply of vaccine from the state they will not be able to open a mass vaccination site in Willow Grove as soon as they had hoped.
“We are ready to open a third mass vaccination site near the Willow Grove Mall but that is dependent on receiving more vaccine. Our team was optimistic that we would be able to open this site next week however, that will not be the case. We just do not have enough vaccine to expand our operations right now,” county Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh said during a Wednesday news briefing. “But we are hopeful that that will change in the coming weeks.”
Officials estimated they could potentially administer between 4,000 and 5,000 first doses of vaccine a day at the Willow Grove site.
“But if we could get even enough to do 1,000 per day at that site, we would open with that. So really about double of what we’re getting right now,” Arkoosh explained.
Currently, the county Office of Public Health operates two vaccination sites.
The county previously opened a vaccination clinic at Norristown High School to serve those who have appointments to receive their second doses of the vaccine.
Those receiving their first dose of the vaccine are currently being served at a clinic hosted by the Montgomery County Community College campus in Whitpain. The county is currently administering about 1,000 first doses per day with the amount of vaccine being received from the state.
“We continue to remain flexible to provide both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines at our clinics and when the state is ready to provide us with Johnson & Johnson vaccine we will be ready for that too,” Arkoosh said.
Earlier this week, county officials joined elected officials from Chester, Delaware and Bucks counties to draft a statement demanding more transparency from the state Department of Health regarding the formula the state uses for determining vaccine distribution to counties. The elected officials believe the state’s formula has left the Southeast region short of vaccines based on the area’s population.
The regional leaders asked state officials to create a publicly available chart showing the amount of vaccine from all sources that has been delivered to each county each month. They also seek a description of the “County Index” that the department of health is currently using to allocate doses to each county and an explanation how the index has been applied to each county since it came into use in January. The leaders also asked state officials to explain how and when counties that are lagging in vaccine delivery will receive additional vaccine.
Arkoosh said officials have not yet heard from state officials regarding their concerns.
“There has been no official response to that letter that I am aware of and the county has received this week the same amount of vaccine that we received for the last several weeks, so there’s been no change in our allocation,” Arkoosh said on Wednesday.
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. The local leaders previously described the one-hour virtual meeting with state officials as “both disappointing and frustrating.”
“They showed us a graph…they described verbally what went into that graph but they didn’t give us any of the data behind the graph. So I personally found it difficult to interpret and I continue to ask for just simple transparency here,” Arkoosh said. “We just need a chart with each week of the year since vaccine has been coming and where it went, to which counties, just so we have some sense of the algorithm that they’re using.”
According to Arkoosh, state officials described the vaccine allotment algorithm as taking into account a county’s population, the number of COVID-19 cases in a county, the number of deaths in a county, and the number of residents age 65 and older.
“But they haven’t explained how they actually apply that index. It’s been enormously frustrating. We’re just asking for simple transparency,” Arkoosh said.
Regional leaders said they have no way to assess how the data presented to them on Sunday was calculated, and how those calculations have been used to determine the number of doses that have been allocated to the four counties.
“It was as clear as mud and we’ve gotten no follow up or transparency since,” added Commissioner Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Health reported on Wednesday that 55,474 county residents had received the full two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, during the ongoing Phase 1A of the state’s vaccine distribution program. Another 100,702 residents had received the first dose of the vaccine, according to state data.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses to achieve optimum protection.
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 health department. 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.
County officials reported 110 daily new cases of the virus on Wednesday, bringing the county’s total number of positive cases to 47,990 since March 7, 2020, when the first two cases of the virus were identified in the county, according to the latest data. Three of the daily new cases were individuals who resided in long-term care facilities.
Officials also reported one more COVID-19 death on Wednesday, bringing the county’s death toll to 1,236 since the pandemic began a year ago.
On Wednesday, there were 110 COVID-19 patients in the county’s nine hospitals and 15 of the individuals required ventilators, according to county data.
The overall 14-day COVID-19 positivity rate for the county, as of March 4, was 5.05% which was a decrease from the 5.47% positivity rate recorded during the previous 14-day period ending Feb. 25, according to county data.
Health officials believe having a positivity rate less than 5% indicates a county is controlling the spread of the virus and keeping it suppressed. Between Feb. 5 and March 4, the daily positivity rate did fall below 5% on eight days.
“This is great progress. We’re almost down into that suppression range,” Arkoosh said.