PA Will Vaccinate Teachers With Johnson & Johnson Vaccine

PENNSYLVANIA — A major shift in Pennsylvania's vaccine policy was announced Wednesday, as the state says it will use the influx of doses from the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to inoculate teachers and school employees.

The state will receive 94,600 doses of the single-dose vaccine this week, and pharmacies will receive another 30,000 directly from the federal government. Some 4 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses are expected in the state by the end of March, and the bulk of teachers should be immunized by then.

"Doing it this way is faster than any other way we can conceive ... to get our children back to in-person classrooms as quickly as possible," Gov. Tom Wolf said in a news briefing Wednesday.

All public and private teachers will be eligible for the vaccine, as well as school employees including bus drivers, janitors, child care workers and others.

Early appointments for the vaccine will be prioritized for teachers who have "regular and sustained" in-person contact with students on an average day. This includes pre-K and elementary students, students with disabilities, English learners, and other at-risk students. Teachers of older students will be next, Wolf said.

Teachers had previously not been eligible to receive the vaccine unless they fit one of the other criteria for the 1A category. There was a push to prioritize teachers in recent weeks, and the state faced renewed criticism for its decision to expand 1A to include all residents over the age of 65 while leaving teachers behind.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, which was among those pushing for teachers to be prioritized, lauded the move.

“This is an incredibly important step," PSEA President Rich Askey said in a statement. “Making the vaccine available to school staff is a key step to getting more students back in the classroom, more parents back to work without worry, and our economy back on track."

The Pennsylvania National Guard will coordinate the security and logistics of these doses, which will be administered by AMI Expeditionary Healthcare through vaccine clinics at 28 intermediate units across the state. Intermediate units will coordinate with teachers and individual school districts to schedule appointments.

Most of these locations will begin vaccinating between March 10 and March 13.

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About 200,000 school employees fall into this category, Wolf estimated. Officials are unsure exactly how long it might take to vaccinate all of them, but Wolf was optimistic it will be swift.

"We should have the bulk of our educators able to go back to work by the end of the month," Wolf said, adding that the "very last" of educators should be inoculated by mid-April.

Wolf noted the vaccine has less-stringent storage requirements, giving it greater flexibility in distribution. Because it only requires one shot, there will not be a weeks-long delay to receive a second dose, meaning the full protections of the vaccine will manifest for teachers sooner.

“Many children across the commonwealth have struggled with virtual learning during the past year,” state Rep. Tim O’Neal, a member of the vaccine task force, said Wednesday. "This will speed up children returning to the classroom full time, while not taking doses away from our senior citizens and those with health issues in Phase 1A."

The new plan was put together by the bipartisan joint legislative task force on the vaccine. It will not slow the ongoing efforts to vaccinate the rest of 1A, which the state said continues at an "accelerated pace" with increased doses of Moderna and Pfizer expected.

Other essential workers in 1B — such as police officers, firefighters and grocery store workers — will not see their priority status shifted as a result of Wednesday's news.

For more information on the COVID-19 vaccination in Pennsylvania, visit Patch's information hub.