The director of the Allegheny County Department of Health said he was not prepared to accommodate the expansion of vaccine distribution through Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania.
“I would like to tell you that we can vaccinate everyone who now meets these extensive criteria,” said Dr. Debra Bogen said during a Wednesday news conference. “But the reality is that the current vaccine supply makes it unattainable at the moment.”
Government officials announced Tuesday that Phase 1A of vaccinations will be extended to people over 65 and people aged 16-64 with certain health problems, including cancer, kidney disease, COPD and other conditions that increase the risk of covid-19. . The expansion means that 4 million people nationwide are now eligible for the vaccine.
But the health department only learned of the change yesterday, Bogen said, and as it currently stands, the country has received less than 20,000 doses a week since its enactment. She said Allegheny County has many vaccine providers who are eager to help administer doses as quickly as possible, but there just aren’t enough to go around.
The province continues to focus on health care workers and plans to appoint vaccines by invitation only. Bogen said the health department will use its limited vaccine for workers who may miss other providers, with the aim of ensuring fairness and equity in the distribution of vaccines.
“If you use a link to the site shared with you by friends or family, you should know that you are taking an appointment with a healthcare professional and slowing down our ability to open vaccines to a wider audience,” he said. she said.
The health department’s update comes the same day as a memorandum signed by medical officials from several health systems in the state about the covid-19 vaccine. The doctors indicate that there are not yet enough vaccines available for everyone who is considered in Phase 1A of Pennsylvania’s vaccination plan.
According to Bogen, residents can use a new quiz from the state Department of Health to determine if they are able to get vaccine, and can use an online map to find a vaccine provider. She noted that supply is limited and demand is high, so it will be difficult to plan anything at the moment. Furthermore, there is no central enrollment site for vaccines for the state or for Pennsylvania as a whole, which places most of the scheduling at individual clinics and hospitals. Bogen said the health department is working on a system to register vaccines with provinces.
Meanwhile, Bogen said the province’s covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths on the plateau had begun to occur, and it had fallen lower than expected after the winter holidays. The province’s positivity rate has fallen from 11.5% to 9.3% in the past week, and fewer people died in January than last month.
Bogen attributes the lower-than-expected figures to the state’s temporary mitigation measures in the last weeks of 2020, which suspended, among other things, the indoor dining room and outdoor schools and sports in high school.
“We saw it in the summer, we saw it early in the pandemic,” Bogen said. ‘You set strong mitigation orders, you see a plateau in business in about two weeks, and slow and steady decline. This is exactly what we saw again. ”
She urged county residents to stay vigilant, especially amid news of hospital shortages in places like Los Angeles, and the emergence of two new strains of the virus known to be more transmissible.
“The vaccine is very exciting, but we still have a long way to go,” she said.
Teghan Simonton is an author of the staff of Tribune-Review. You can contact Teghan at 724-226-4680, [email protected] or via Twitter .
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