Bucks Co. To Double Shots At Vaccine Clinics

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Health officials in Bucks County hope to double the number of shots given at their coronavirus vaccination clinics this week after receiving bigger shipments of the vaccine.

The Bucks County Health Department got nearly 4,700 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the state last week. That was after getting none the previous week, when winter storms made travel difficult.

Bucks officials say they plan to give 400 doses of the vaccine daily at each of three clinics on Bucks County Community College campuses. That would amount to an additional 6,000 shots this week.

Bucks County COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: Updates

The county crossed the milestone of 100,000 COVID-19 vaccine shots given over the weekend, as 11,028 doses were administered countywide last week. Of those, 2,975 were given at the county clinics, while the rest were delivered by Bucks County hospitals, doctors and pharmacies.

Meanwhile, the number of new coronavirus infections remained relatively flat in Bucks County last week, after a big dip the week before.

There were 1,050 new positive cases reported in Bucks from Feb. 21-27. That's a less than 4-percent increase over the previous week, when case numbers had dropped 32 percent.

The seven-day average of new cases last week was 152, while Bucks County's test positivity rate dropped from 8.2 percent to 7 percent.

Another 21 COVID deaths were reported in Bucks County last week, for a total of 75 in February and 1,132 since the pandemic began.

In more encouraging news, hospitalizations continued to drop last week. There were 75 patients in Bucks County hospitals with the coronavirus, down from 90 the previous week. Of those, 19 were in intensive care and 11 of them on ventilators.

Compared to peak times this fall and winter, when the percentage of intensive care beds in Bucks hospitals threatened to dip into single digits, 46 percent of those beds were available at the end of last week, along with 27 percent of adult medical surgical beds.

Bucks County officials' hopes were bolstered with reports that bigger vaccine shipments are headed to the suburban counties around Philadelphia.

A Philadelphia Inquirer analysis showed that Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties were getting less vaccine per capita than many smaller, rural counties in Pennsylvania.

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlan, of Delaware County, announced Monday that she and other Congressional representatives had spoken to state officials, and that the area is "going to get extra to bring us up to the state average."

For more local coverage on the coronavirus vacccine, visit our Pennsylvania vaccine information page.

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