Lehigh Valley providers say they’re ready for demand
Ready or not, here comes everybody.
Wednesday’s announcement that Pennsylvania will rapidly expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility relieved providers, who want to jab as many arms as possible in a bid to outrace dangerous and unpredictable coronavirus variants and end the pandemic.
The state was criticized for how long it was taking to slog through phase 1A of its threephase vaccine rollout, which targeted health care workers, the elderly and people with certain medical conditions, but the pace of shots has accelerated in recent weeks.
As of Wednesday, law enforcement officers, firefighters, grocery store workers and food and agricultural workers became eligible. The pool will expand Monday to everyone eligible under phase 1B, then April 12 to residents in phase 1C. On April 19, all adults will become eligible.
The question now is whether hospitals, health bureaus, drugstores and other providers are ready for the increased demand.
As the home of two large health care networks, the Lehigh Valley is well-positioned for a mass vaccination campaign.
“We have been prepared for this for a long time,” said Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, infectious disease specialist at St. Luke’s University
Health Network. “Our limitation in the past has always been the supply chain, not the distribution chain. We are capable of increasing our output two to threefold easily if we had the supply.”
That should be less of an issue going forward. A record 504,340 first doses of the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been allotted to Pennsylvania for next week, a 20% increase over this week’s 421,220 doses, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The total includes Philadelphia, which gets its own allocations and deliveries.
Lehigh Valley Health Network is also prepared for the increase, spokesperson Brian Downs said. The network has been holding mass vaccination clinics at Dorney Park and other sites and just announced the opening of two centers, in Whitehall and Palmer townships.
“We have been strictly following the state guidelines regarding the groups to be vaccinated, which up to now has been Phase 1A,” Downs said. “We’ve been planning around making that happen as quickly as possible for as many people as possible. At the same time, we have been aware all along that eventually everyone will be eligible for vaccination. Our planning also has taken that into account, knowing we’ll need the efficiency of our mass drive-thrus as well as other larger locations like the two we just announced.”
LVHN has plenty of practice running annual drive-thru flu shot clinics, which are hosted at Dorney Park in South Whitehall and Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, among other places.
LVHN has held a number of drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine clinics at Dorney and at the Pocono Raceway. St. Luke’s has also held mass clinics, but Jahre said he favors giving doses in hospital settings in case patients have adverse reactions. Some people turn out to be allergic to an ingredient in the shot; others have anxiety that can lead to fainting, chest pain or other symptoms.
“We have 11 hospitals in the region and can give them in all those places,” he said, adding that the network has provided 3,000-4,000 shots in one day across its campuses — about as many as are given at a largescale, drive-thru event.
The Allentown Health Bureau has been averaging 5,000 vaccinations a week at its clinics at the Allentown Fairgrounds, which is expected to run through June. Like other sites, it could give more shots if the state provided more.
Director Vicky Kistler said she’s pleased eligibility will expand, because the bureau fields frequent calls from people who risk exposure at their jobs in grocery stores or other facilities but aren’t eligible under 1A guidelines.
“They’re frustrated and understandably so,” she said. “So those types of discussion will be over and the discussion will now be focused on ‘How do I get an appointment?’ Those conversations will be easier.”
Kistler said the bureau’s biggest problem lately has been no-shows — people who schedule an appointment but get the vaccine elsewhere and forget to cancel their bureau reservation.
Anecdotally, at least, she’s see little sign of vaccine hesitancy.
“If they don’t show up and we call them to say ‘Are you coming?’ they’ll say, ‘Oh, I got it at Rite Aid,’ “she said. “People aren’t chickening out.”