How PA Stacks Up In Vaccine Efficiency, Administration

PENNSYLVANIA — Leaders in Pennsylvania are confident they've made significant progress in improving the efficiency of their vaccine administration program, citing CDC statistics that place them high in at least one key metric over the past week. They're also hopeful they're on track to meet the aggressive deadlines set recently by President Biden, in making vaccine available to the general public by May, but they've pointed to some caveats.

Questions of equity remain, and the state faces criticism from counties and state legislators over many aspects of its rollout. For instance, while they've seen improvements, the state continues to be among the lower ranked states in other measures like efficiency.

How Pennsylvania stacks up

Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam touted CDC statistics on Thursday that showed that Pennsylvania was second in the state in administration of doses per 100,000 residents over the past week.

The state trailed only New Mexico in that category in the period from March 11 to March 17, the state said.

"That is proof that the rate of vaccinations is accelerating here," Beam said.

That is unquestionably true. For several weeks now, the state has been receiving its largest shipments of doses from the federal government, and they say they've been promised these shipments will increase significantly more in the coming weeks. This, in turn, has led to more doses being administered.

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Pennsylvania has also improved its efficiency rating, or the percentage of the doses it's received which it has actually administered.

After being among the six or seven lowest ranked states in the country for months, according to a New York Times analysis of data, Pennsylvania now sits at 31st overall in efficiency. It's 77 percent mark is firmly in the middle of the pack, as the vast majority of states have a rating between 72 and 82 percent.

Focusing on "high-performing" providers

The state announced a month ago that they would focus vaccine allocations to the highest performing providers statewide. This involved cutting the overall number of providers from around 1,700 to around 200 or 300. This process seems to be largely complete.

"We're now partnering with providers who are best suited to get as many vaccinated as quickly as possible," Beam said.

Some factors considered in making these determinations were geographic reach, access for residents, demographic equity, estimated demand for that site, and "throughput," or total daily capacity.

The state published an updated map this week that shows where these providers are at, in a more user-friendly format.

March 31 and May 1 deadlines

President Biden announced that he wants the vaccine to be available to the general public by May 1. Gov. Wolf has called the plan "bold" and says he wants to reach that mark.

"It is aggressive, but we are going to work to be able to comply with it," Beam said Thursday, pointing again to increased allocations in the coming weeks.

However, there is no expectation at the state level that everyone will be vaccinated by this date. Rather, the state sees this as the date when by which appointments will be scheduled.

"This doesn't necessarily mean a shot in the arm (for everyone) on May 1," Beam said. "We want the scheduling system and the infrastructure (to be read) by then."

The state has also announced a March 31 deadline for all of 1A to be scheduled.

County leaders say they're on board to working with the state on these initiatives, but that at the current rate, it will take four to five months just to get through 1A, nevermind the general public.

Efforts at transparency

The state has faced increased frustration from county leaders and state legislators in recent weeks for what they call a lack of transparency on several key issues, including the algorithm used to determine county allocations, and various other data sources.

For their part, the state announced a few changes on Thursday that they said improved transparency, although they have not addressed the issues brought to them by local leaders.

Specifically, they've included the data on which providers are receiving first and second doses each week available on their Open Data Portal. They're also listing which long term facilities have a vaccine clinic coming up this week. Data sources are also available to be downloaded on the updated provider map.

"We believe this level of access to data is unprecedented," Executive Deputy Secretary Keara Klinepeter said.

Moderna mixup resolved

Weeks ago, the state revealed an issue that had been ongoing since January: vaccine providers around the state distributing second doses as first doses.

While not noticeable at first, the cumulative effect of these mis-administrations of doses that had been earmarked as second doses soon caught up. Roughly 30,000 to 60,000 residents experienced a delay in receiving their second dose as a result.

On Thursday, the state said that the "smoothing" process which was undergone to mitigate these delays has been completed. That process involved reallocating some first doses as second doses, as well as extending the amount of time to the CDC-maximum of 42 days between first and second doses for many residents.

For full information about getting a coronavirus vaccine in Pennsylvania, visit Patch's information hub.