State Drops Plans For Regional Vaccine Clinics

PENNSYLVANIA — The planned state-run, regional mass vaccination clinics in southeastern Pennsylvania will not materialize, after all, officials announced on Wednesday, as the counties will instead directly receive an increase in doses to administer themselves. Local leaders in the Philadelphia collar counties had aggressively campaigned for just this outcome for weeks.

State leaders pointed to President Biden's recent announcements, including the doubling of the federal retail pharmacy partnership to include some 40,000 providers nationwide, as the reason for the shift in policy.

"The federal government is really going to take on our mission, which was going to be taken on by mass vaccination clinics, which is getting at volume," Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said Wednesday.

Instead of the planned regional sites, which local leaders said would cause vast inequities due to driving times and the need to sign up for a new list, the counties will use existing sites to deliver the increased shipments of vaccine.

Specifically, a weekly shipment of 42,000 Johnson & Johnson doses, which were previously set aside for the southeastern regional sites, will head straight to the counties. Those 42,000 will be split equally into shipments of 10,500 between the county health departments in Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, and Chester counties, allowing them to significantly accelerate their 1A timelines.

State officials did not say if the urging from county leaders and a bipartisan coalition of state legislators in the southeast had an influence over the decision.

"A large number of factors were in play" said State Sen. Art Haywood, the southeast's lone representative on the legislative task force on the vaccine, which advises policy. "We're in a situation where we've got to react to a lot of different factors, including President Biden's decision to put vaccines into pharmacies."

RELATED: PA Expediting Vaccine Timeline; All Eligible By April 19

The announcement comes as the state says that the vaccine will be available to the general public in Pennsylvania by April 19, as they plan to swiftly move through the remaining phases.

"I am happy to see that the DOH has agreed to allocate doses directly to the county health departments, which is something that I have been advocating for along with my colleagues in SEPA," State Sen. Katie Muth said Wednesday.

For weeks now, the counties have argued they have been shortchanged by the state in vaccine allocations, a contention vigorously rejected by the Department of Health. As the four counties have been vocal in explaining, the infrastructure already exists to administer many more doses than they have been receiving.

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