No Change In Montco Vaccine Allocation After Meeting With State

NORRISTOWN, PA — Montgomery County saw no change in its vaccine allocation this week after a meeting with the state this weekend to address how the southeastern region of the state has been shortchanged in doses.

Additionally, county leaders said that there has been no official response to the rare joint statement put out by four counties earlier this week, which called for greater transparency in the algorithm used by the state to determine these allocations.

"I continue to ask for just simple transparency here," Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said Wednesday, noting that the Pennsylvania Department of Health's handling of the situation has been "enormously frustrating."

During the meeting, Arkoosh said leaders from Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, and Bucks counties were shown a graph that was supposed to demonstrate how allocations were made, but the graph was difficult to interpret. "I don't really know that I can adequately describe it," Arkoosh said.

"It was as clear as mud," Commissioner Ken Lawrence added.

The state did disclose the four metrics they use in the allocation determination: total population, elderly population, deaths, and total number of cases. But they did not explain how they calculate the distribution of doses using those metrics, Arkoosh said.

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All told, roughly 23 percent of the total eligible population in Montgomery County has now been vaccinated; that includes 100,702 partial vaccinations and 55,474 full vaccinations. The county is making its way through its massive 1A vaccine priority category, with some 137,000 registered individuals now remaining on the wait list.

But county leaders have expressed concerns that counties elsewhere in the state are making much more rapid progress in their 1A distribution, and appear ready to move into 1B. Southeastern Pennsylvania leaders are concerned the state will allow these 1B vaccinations to move forward without getting through 1A first, although the state has said this will not happen.

"The next steps are in the Department of Health's court," Arkoosh said. "We have 2.5 million here in the suburban counties...we provide an enormous amount of tax revenue to the commonwealth. "It is critical that we get this area vaccinated."

A total of 55,474 registration invitations have been sent out, officials said Wednesday. The county is still working through the thousands of registrations that were made on Jan. 14, so individuals who registered at that time should expect to be contacted soon.

The county is now consistently receiving enough doses to keep their two vaccine clinics open. However, they still do not have enough to open their third site, in Willow Grove, just yet.

The county has been administering roughly 5,000 first doses per week, or a little over 1,000 individuals on each weekday, Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said.

As of Wednesday, they have 9,000 doses of the vaccine in hand, which means they're on track to still have doses in hand when they receive their next shipment from the state next Tuesday or Wednesday.

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