Pittsburgh-Vaccination To Accelerate In Allegheny County, Ahead Of Detection Of New COVID-19 Variant

Pittsburgh PA

07 January, 2021

10:39 AM

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Public Source By PublicSource reporters | January 6, 2021 Allegheny County's COVID-19 vaccination program will soon quicken, just as it expects a new, more contagious form of the virus to arrive. The number of people receiving coronavirus vaccinations in the county should start increasing rapidly, said Dr. Debra Bogen, the director of the Allegheny County Health Department [ACHD], at Wednesday's Board of Health meeting. That's because the number of providers the state has approved to administer the vaccination was recently increased substantially, she said. The number of people vaccinated so far is at least 16,000, she said. Bogen estimated that there were around 85,000 health care workers who would be eligible to receive vaccinations in the first stage of the rollout and according to national averages nearly 70,000 of them would likely take it up. The county is following the CDC's guidelines to prioritize who receives the vaccine first. White women have been most likely to receive the vaccine so far. Bogen noted this could be due to the demographics of health care workers in general, though she said she didn't know the racial demographics of the eligible workers. She also noted it's possible the low amount of vaccination among people of color could be related to distrust of the vaccine in communities of color. The county is rolling out a communications program to try to increase trust in public health measures among residents of color, she said. "Clearly we need to work on making sure information is gotten to all of our communities, particularly our communities of color so we can eliminate this disparity in our vaccination rates," Bogen said. The county added an additional COVID-19 vaccination distribution clinic Monday at DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Pittsburgh - Monroeville Convention Center. Previously, the only COVID-19 distribution clinic was located Downtown. More than 700 facilities or organizations have requested vaccination through the county's online form, according to a Monday press release. Vaccinations will only be administered at this time to individuals who fall in the Phase 1A category, which covers healthcare workers. Workers need only be employed in Allegheny County to access this clinic — it doesn't matter where they reside. Allegheny County has launched its vaccine dashboard, which provides frequently updated information about the numbers of vaccine doses administered by county and also shares demographic information about those vaccinated. During the first week of January, CVS is providing COVID-19 vaccinations for all residents and staff of Allegheny County's Kane Community Living Centers, if they want the vaccine. CVS is also administering vaccinations at 120 skilled nursing facilities across Pennsylvania and Walgreens is doing so at six skilled nursing homes statewide. Faster-spreading variant expected Even though a new, more transmissible variant of the coronavirus hasn't been confirmed in Allegheny County, Dr. Lee Harrison, the board chair, said that the county is increasing its capacity to test for the variant. Bogen said she expects the variant will be here soon if it's not here already. "If it's in five or six states it's probably in many or all the states," Bogen said. When it arrives, the more transmissible virus could lead to an increase in the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, she said. The county had been seeing a slight downtick in all three measures over the past few weeks, but Bogen warned that health officials were waiting to see if there would be an uptick following holiday gatherings. The arrival of the new variant shouldn't change the public's adherence to the public health measures already in place, Bogen said. "Schools are relatively low risk and safe behavior," Bogen reiterated at the board meeting. She pointed out that, according to the county's data, the number of cases in households with remote learning has been similar to the number of cases in households with in-person instruction. She also said that less than 10% of the county's COVID-19 cases come from K-12 schools. Earlier in the week Pittsburgh Public Schools administrators said they were looking at how COVID-19 cases would increase after the holidays, before making decisions about whether to restart in person instruction. In a livestream later on Wednesday, Bogen noted that, looking back at 2020, cases and hospitalizations peaked in late November and early December but have been trending down since. "While this is encouraging, I am unsure it will continue, as I remain worried about a post-holiday surge," Bogen said. ACHD has received reports of COVID-19 cases related to Christmas and New Year's Eve parties as well as travel. The department is also currently investigating five New Year's Eve parties that hosted groups as large as 40 people, many with teenagers and young adults, according to Bogen. "As we have seen in the past, cases among young, healthy people can quickly spread to their older and more vulnerable family members and friends," she said. ACHD reported 881 new COVID-19 cases and 46 new deaths Wednesday. The new cases, from positive tests dated Nov. 21 to Jan. 5, come from individuals three months old to 100 years old, with a median age of 49. The deaths, dated Nov. 28 to Jan. 5, come from one person in their 40s, one in their 50s, three in their 60s, 14 in their 70s, 18 in their 80s and nine in their 90s. To date, ACHD has reported 57,708 cases, 1,057 deaths from the virus and 3,299 past and present hospitalizations. Pennsylvania approaches 700,000 cases The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed 9,474 new COVID-19 cases and 368 new deaths Wednesday, bringing the new totals since the start of the pandemic to 683,389 cases and 16,914 deaths. Nursing and personal care home residents and employees represent about 9.6% of the state's cases and approximately 55% of the state's deaths. Healthcare workers represent about 2.9% of the state's cases. County-specific information and a statewide map are available on the COVID-19 Data Dashboard. Since Tuesday, at least 159,216 vaccine doses have been administered in Pennsylvania. SNAP benefits, enrollment rising Following a 5.6% increase in SNAP enrollment in Pennsylvania since February 2020, the new COVID-19 response package from the federal government will increase the maximum SNAP benefits by 15%. This change to SNAP benefits, which financially assist low-income families in purchasing groceries, took effect at the beginning of the month and will expire June 30, 2021. "We are thankful for these rule changes, as those with the lowest income that were receiving the maximum SNAP benefits did not see an increase in their benefits during the pandemic and economic downturn," Department of Human Services Secretary Teresa Miller said in a Wednesday press release. "This not only hurt our lowest-income neighbors, but our communities, as charitable food networks were overburdened. This [rule change] is incredibly helpful for our lowest-income families and others who are going through difficult times." Since February, the month before COVID-19 first shuttered the economy, 96,549 additional people have enrolled in SNAP, putting overall statewide enrollment at more than 1.8 million. Additionally, 300,076 more people have enrolled in Medicaid since February 2020, a 10.6% increase. The new federal package did not affect Medicaid benefits. Statewide vaccination, mitigation update Through Monday, at least 144,863 vaccine doses have been administered in Pennsylvania. The federal government has allotted 166,725 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to be shipped to Pennsylvania this week. Of these, 97,500 (about 58%) will be set aside to be administered as second doses for the first round of vaccinated individuals, 30,225 (about 18%) for healthcare facilities and 39,000 (about 23%) for the federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens. Pennsylvania also expects to receive 80,000 new Moderna vaccine doses this week. Gov. Tom Wolf's office reported a new statewide positivity rate of 15% for COVID-19 tests, .1% less than last week. The state also confirmed 40,407 new cases for Dec. 25 to Dec. 31, more than 8,000 fewer cases than the previous week. Of those 40,407 new cases from the last week of December, 3,929 came from individuals ages five to 18. The previous week, 769 more five to 18 year olds tested positive. Still, staggeringly low numbers of people are answering calls from case investigators, who collect data on business visits and prepare information for contact tracers. Only 4.4% of people behind the 53,947 cases reported from Dec. 20 to Dec. 26 provided information about business visits to case investigators. Of those who provided an answer, about 5.7% said they visited a business, the majority of whom attended restaurants. Monday morning marked the expiration of mitigation orders announced in December that temporarily banned in-door dining, extracurricular school events and gyms. These orders were intended to be targeted specifically to control the virus' transmission during the holiday season. "Our mitigation efforts over the past several weeks have done what they were intended to do, and I thank everybody who abided by the restrictions put in place to protect us," Wolf said. Wolf made clear that there are still several other orders in place that must be followed. "I keep saying, we can't ignore the reality that the virus is out there," Wolf said. "And whatever we do, this is not me, this is not Secretary Levine talking, this is the virus, saying 'I'm gonna getcha!'" This article was reported by Oliver Morrison, Rich Lord, Matt Petras, Juliette Rihl, Charlie Wolfson, Mark Kramer, Jon Moss, Emma Folts, Veonna King, Amanda Su, Kellen Stepler, James Anthony Bell III, Sophie Burkholder and Amanda Hernandez. 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.