Pittsburgh, PA Expands 1A Vaccination Phase To People Over 65 & Those With Medical Conditions

Pittsburgh PA

20 January, 2021

3:26 PM

Description

By PublicSource reporters, Public Source 2021-01-19 Deputy Secretary of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and head of the COVID-19 vaccine task force, Cindy Findley, announced Tuesday the expansion of vaccine distribution and changes to the COVID-19 vaccine plan in Pennsylvania. Effective immediately, the Department of Health is expanding phase 1A to include anyone over the age of 65 and people aged 16-64 with serious medical conditions that make them more at risk for severe illness. Effective immediately, the Department of Health is expanding phase 1A to include anyone over the age of 65 and people aged 16-64 with serious medical conditions that make them more at risk for severe illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines this group as people who have conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), cancer, sickle cell disease and chronic kidney disease. Pregnant women also are included in this group. A full list of these medical conditions is available in version 5 of the interim vaccine plan on the department's website. Findley said that people can determine their eligibility and find out when they may receive the vaccine by taking the eligibility quiz found on the state website. "To help people determine when they are eligible for vaccination, and how to get vaccinated, we have developed a 'vaccine eligibility quiz' now online at pa.gov," Findley said. Allegheny County Health Department reported 432 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths Tuesday. The new cases — from positive tests dated Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 — come from individuals 1 year old to 99 years old, with a median age of 42. To date, Allegheny County Health Department has reported 65,144 cases, 1,225 deaths from the virus and 3,805 past and present hospitalizations. The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 5,341 new COVID-19 cases and 77 new deaths Tuesday, bringing the totals since the start of the pandemic to 777,186 cases and 19,467 deaths. Nursing and personal care home residents and employees represent about 9.2% of the state's cases and approximately 52% of the state's deaths. Healthcare workers represent about 2.8% of the state's cases. Through Jan. 14, at least 477,929 vaccine doses have been administered in Pennsylvania.There are 340,947 people who have received one dose of the vaccine and 68,491 people who have received both doses of the vaccine. Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine on Tuesday gave a weekly status update detailing the state's mitigation efforts based on the COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring System dashboard. The dashboard highlights a seven-day case increase of 40,088 and a statewide percent positivity of 12.7% with all 67 counties having substantial transmission status. Wolf said the state continues to make strides towards decreasing the statewide percent positivity rate. "We continue to see great progress on bringing our statewide percent positivity rate down and I think that is due to Pennsylvanians continued commitment to wear a mask, avoid gatherings, wash their hands and practice social distancing," Wolf said. "I believe we can continue these best public health practices to continue to bring the transmission of COVID-19 down in our communities and keep each other safe as we continue the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine." Last week, the statewide percent-positivity went down to 12.7% from 14.4%. Every county in the state has a concerning percent positivity above 5 percent. This includes four counties with percent positivity at or above 20 percent, a decrease from the 10 counties reported from the week before. Levine discussed the state's efforts to monitor and report the cases and transmission rates found in Pennsylvania through the dashboard. "As we continue to experience widespread community transmission of COVID-19, we continue our efforts to complete a case investigation with those who are diagnosed with COVID-19 to collect where they went and who they came in contact with while infectious," Levine said. These announcements come alongside the news that president-elect Joe Biden's administration tapped Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health to nominee Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra. Levine will be the first openly transgender official if confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A graduate of Harvard University and Tulane Medical School, Levine was appointed in 2017 by Wolf and has been a prominent public health official working to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the state. "It has truly been an honor to serve the people of Pennsylvania under the leadership of Governor Tom Wolf," Levine said in a statement. "I am proud of the work we have done as an administration to address health equity, and the work I have done personally to raise awareness about LGBTQ equity issues. And I am extremely proud of the work we have done during the last year to save lives in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic," Levine said. *** The Departments of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday, Jan. 19, that the state will be partnering with Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid pharmacies to help administer the COVID-19 vaccinations to staff and residents of certain long-term care facilities licensed by the Department of Human Services. The partnership with Rite Aid will begin Jan. 27 and clinics will be established to obtain the vaccine doses at scheduled times. This effort is separate from the Retail Pharmacy Program which allows for pharmacies licensed by the state to administer the vaccine once the COVID-19 vaccines become widely available to the public. Under this partnership with Rite Aid an estimated 6,000 personal care homes and assisted living facilities will be covered, and it will be a multi-week effort to coordinate vaccination of all facilities based on the vaccine supply available to Pennsylvania. *** Responding to widespread perceptions that vaccines are lying unused, ACHD Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen said Wednesday that more vaccine doses are being administered locally than have been counted. "I know one of the concerns is that according to the state, only about 30,000 doses have been administered in the county, but this is certainly a significant underestimate," Bogen said. "There have been some challenges in uploading data to the state immunization information system, which we are working on with the state to address." About 115,000 vaccine doses have been distributed to Allegheny County, Bogen said. In the county, 32,187 partial doses and 4,993 full doses of the vaccine have been administered, according to the state's online vaccine dashboard. ACHD administered 2,266 of these doses itself. Bogen said one of the challenges in rolling out the vaccine is that the county gets no more than a week's notice of how many vaccine doses will arrive. "Knowing when more vaccine is coming down the pike would be helpful," Bogen said. "And I know that's a challenge both at the federal level and the state level, but certainly … when we have that information, and we have some knowledge of what's coming in three, four, five, 10 weeks, that would be helpful, but it's not available at this time." County-specific information and a statewide map are available on the COVID-19 Data Dashboard. Wolf last week encouraged all Pennsylvanians to get the COVID-19 vaccine. "The COVID-19 vaccines are really an important tool in our fight against COVID-19, but they're only going to be effective if Pennsylvanians actually get vaccinated," Wolf said in a press briefing. "And we should get vaccinated, because these vaccines are both safe and they're highly effective." Wolf's comments come as misinformation spreads around the country about the vaccine, such as the false claim that it can give you the virus or that it doesn't work. He pointed those concerned about the vaccine to the websites of the Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "If you hear a rumor about COVID-19 from a friend or see something online that concerns you, take a few minutes to verify the information before you get too worried about it," Wolf said. Wolf said he will not receive the vaccine before vulnerable groups such as healthcare workers and nursing home residents. "But when it's my turn, I'm gonna get vaccinated, and I look forward to that day," Wolf said. "I'm going to encourage my family members, and I'm going to encourage everybody in Pennsylvania to do the same thing." Wolf reiterated facts about the vaccine, reminding Pennsylvanians that there's no evidence of it being dangerous and that the two vaccine options are 94% to 95% effective against COVID-19. Dr. Cynthia Chuang of the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center joined Wolf at the briefing and said the vaccine is incredibly effective when compared to other vaccines. Flu vaccines, she said, tend to be 40% to 60% effective. She warned that individuals may experience mild symptoms after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination. She estimated that about 80% who get vaccinated will experience soreness in the arm they receive the shot and about 50% will get other mild symptoms such as drowsiness or headaches. "I can't wait to see [my patients] be offered the vaccine. I have conversations with my patients on a daily basis. They can't wait," Chuang said. "They are anxious, they are asking me very good questions about the vaccine, and they are looking forward to getting it and I'm looking forward to them receiving it." The federal government has thus far distributed 827,300 doses of vaccines to Pennsylvania. Nearly 138,000 new doses will arrive throughout this week, Levine said in a Monday press briefing. Levine said that the department hopes to roll out a "robust" communications plan about the virus that dovetails with a new federal communications strategy led by President-elect Joe Biden's administration. "I think it will be very important for the federal government to have a national communications strategy that emphasizes the safety and the effectiveness of the vaccines," Levine said. Reports of wasted vaccine doses have arisen around the country. Levine said she has not heard of this happening in Pennsylvania and stressed that she wants this to always be avoided. "We don't want any vaccine wasted," Levine said. "If they're going to vaccinate someone in [Phase] 1B as opposed to wasting it, that's absolutely fine. We want to make sure, at the end of the day, that we get vaccines into arms." She warned that it will take several months until every Pennsylvanian has access to the vaccine. "We know that there is significant interest among all Pennsylvanians about when they will be vaccinated," Levine said. "We are working to ensure that everyone who wants access to a COVID-19 vaccine will be able to get it." Levine reported Jan. 7 that a confirmed COVID-19 variant case was found in Dauphin County. This COVID-19 variant was first discovered in the UK in December. The individual, who tested positive after known international exposure and a case investigation, had mild symptoms. Contact tracing was conducted to identify other people who came in close contact with the positive case. "Pennsylvania has been preparing for this variant by working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and has been sending 10 to 35 random samples biweekly to the CDC since November to study sequencing and detect any potential cases for this new COVID-19 variant," Levine said. According to the CDC, coronaviruses can mutate regularly because mutations among viruses are common. The CDC expects that all currently available diagnostic tests will detect the variant as COVID-19 and that vaccines with federal Emergency Use Authorizations will be effective against this variant as well. Levine said public health experts are working to study the virus and understand how this new variant spreads and affects those who are infected. "There is still much to learn about this new variant, so we need to remain vigilant and continue to urge Pennsylvanians to stop the spread by washing their hands, practicing social distancing, avoiding gatherings, downloading COVID Alert PA and answering the call. Stay calm, stay alert and stay safe," Levine said. This article was reported by Annie Siebert, Lauren Davidson, Matt Petras and Punya Bhasin. This article was produced by PublicSource.org, a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. PublicSource tells stories for a better Pittsburgh. Sign up for their free email newsletters at publicsource.org/newsletters.