Pa. leads U.S. plunge in first vaccine doses
As Gov. Tom Wolf travels around Pennsylvania talking up the need to get inoculated, the number of people getting the first of the two-shot regimen has gone off a cliff. Residents getting the first shot slid 93% May 2 from a month earlier to an all-time low, according to the state Department of Health.
The COVID-19 vaccines became available in December and March, with Pennsylvania hitting a record on April 1 with 81,500 people lining up to get their first injection. On May 2, the number of shots plunged to just 5,674.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that found waning demand nationwide, Pennsylvania led the
U.S. in the steepness of the decline; Kaiser set Pennsylvania’s drop-off in demand at 86.5% for the week ending April 29, steeper than any other state.
Meanwhile, Gov. Wolf joined Penn State University President Eric Barron and football coach James Franklin at Beaver Stadium on Wednesday, the third such visit the governor has made outside Harrisburg in the past week to tout vaccinations. Press conferences like the one at the Centre County stadium, social media and website posts and a soon to be announced statewide media campaign are among the ways the Wolf administration is trying to get the word out about vaccinations.
Slumping demand for the COVID-19 vaccines is prompting local hospitals to retool their strategy for reaching the unvaccinated while raising questions about whether the federal government will shift Pennsylvania’s vaccine supply to areas of the country where there is greater demand. President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday said it would start reallocating some doses of the COVID19 vaccine to high demand areas of the country, such as Michigan, from places where requests for the shots are fading.
In a statement Wednesday, the state Health Department said it wouldn’t know how many doses will be ordered until Monday. However, last week was the first time the state received more vaccine than providers had requested.
When registrations dwindled to just a handful from 20,000 in early February, WVU Medicine’s Uniontown Hospital closed its shopping mall vaccination center in Fayette County.
“We completed what we anticipate being our last mass vaccination clinic last week and are confident that any remaining residents that have not been vaccinated to this point will have multiple options to do so,” Mark Dillon, vice president of operations, said in a statement.
But based on Pennsylvania’s overall vaccination rate and other factors, Julie Swann, a professor of industrial systems engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, doesn’t think the state has reached the limit for people wanting the shots. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pennsylvania’s vaccine hesitancy rate of 16% is under the national rate of 19%, so there’s still more people willing to get the shots, she said, but the going will be tough.
“You’re hitting the hard part of the race,” said Ms. Swann, who has studied pandemics for more than 10 years. “You’re going to have to fight for every mile left. It’s going to take some time to make those things happen.”
Still, the sharp decline in demand raises questions about how resistance to the vaccines among some groups of people will be overcome if Pennsylvania is to reach the 70% vaccination goal for adults before Gov. Wolf lifts the facial mask requirement.
Bishop Bernard C. Wallace, administrative assistant at Church in the Round in Beaver County, said he understands the hesitancy issue.
Aliquippa, where the church of 600 parishioners is located, is an impoverished former steelmaking town with a large Black population that often cites the 40year Tuskegee syphilis experiment as reason for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine, he said.
Between 1932 and 1972, hundreds of Black men were denied treatment for syphilis as part of an experiment to observe the natural course of the disease, which often resulted in death, even though effective medications were available after 1940.
“A lot of people are reluctant to get the shots because of the Tuskegee Institute, so there’s a mistrust,” said Bishop Wallace, an Aliquippa native who’s in his late 70s. “Many of us have received both shots, but we’re trying to get those stragglers.”
“We’re trying to cover the uncovered” with education about the safety of the vaccines, he said.
Both walk-ins and appointments are available for a vaccine clinic sponsored by Allegheny Health Network Thursday at the church. Church leaders were hoping to attract 200 people to the three-hour clinic; by Wednesday afternoon, 30 people had signed up.