Vaccine, restrictions pose test
Pa.’s lack of vaccine specifics complicates planning
Shipping of the first batches of the COVID-19 vaccine is underway, an unprecedented undertaking as the country confronts a winter of surging cases of the deadly disease.
Complicating the matter in Pennsylvania is the fact that the state has not disclosed exactly how many doses are anticipated or how the vaccine will be allocated once it gets here.
The state released an interim vaccine plan Friday, but it doesn’t detail which regions or facilities will get the initial doses, making Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico the only places in the U.S. that haven’t released that information, according to a New York Times survey.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Friday approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
for the highly contagious disease, following the recommendation the day before of an independent committee of experts. Hospitals and nursing homes will be first in line to get the shots.
In Pennsylvania, nursing home residents accounted for 40,541, or 9.2%, of COVID-19 cases, according to the state Department of Health’s interim vaccine report Friday. Health care workers made up 3.6% of the total number of cases, or 15,766 people.
The vaccine will arrive while Pennsylvania restaurants, bars and many other businesses have been ordered to close until Jan. 4 and hospitals are curtailing nonemergency medical procedures because of spiking COVID-19 cases.
The government has hired FedEx and UPS to deliver the vaccine to hospitals and nursing homes from airports around the country.
Some say the delivery effort will be a challenge, coming at a time when holiday shipping is nearing its apex.
“It’s going to be one of the biggest logistical problems of the last 20 years,” said Yurly Ostapyak, chief operating officer of Erie-based Logistics Plus Inc., a global logistics, transportation and warehousing company. “E-commerce has been at its all-time high. The entire industry is completely upside-down.”
With FDA approval of the vaccine in hand, refrigerated trucks will begin carrying shipments from Pfizer manufacturing and distribution warehouses to airports, where they will be flown to cities around the country. The first doses are to be delivered Monday morning.
Only 2.9 million doses will be in the first shipment to states — a fraction of what’s needed to inoculate the estimated 21 million health care workers and 3 million residents of longterm care facilities nationwide.
Shipping the vaccine will collide with a spike in online and other nonstore holiday sales, which were expected to jump 20% to 30% in November and December to between $202.5 billion and $218.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s a lot of delivery trucks on the road.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health will determine how much each region will receive, but those numbers have not been disclosed. After postponing release of the information twice last week, a department spokeswoman did not respond Friday, and a spokesman declined to comment Saturday.
In next-door Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine has released not only how many doses his state anticipates but also how many will go to specific facilities statewide.
John Dickson, CEO of Redstone Highlands, a Greensburg-based senior living facility, said that’s the kind of information that would help him plan.
“There’s been no directive at all,” said Mr. Dickson, who plans to vaccinate 400 residents and staff through drugstore chain Walgreens. “Generally, it’s discouraging. We’re waiting for news, and the news doesn’t arrive. It makes it tough for planning on our end.”
A Walgreens spokesman also said state vaccine allocation totals were not yet available.
In the meantime, planning for vaccine clinics in nursing homes continued with most long-term care providers choosing CVS Health or Walgreens to administer the shots under government contracts. At Oakmont-based Presbyterian SeniorCare, the preparations were going smoothly, said spokeswoman Lisa Fischetti.
“This is the best rollout that could possibly happen,” Ms. Fischetti said. “The government went to two pharmacy providers who will make it turnkey for all long-term care.”
Presbyterian anticipates vaccinating 2,500 seniors and caregivers at 13 facilities, chose CVS Health to give the shots. CVS subsidiary Omnicare of Cincinnati will schedule three vaccine clinics at each facility, the first two about a month apart, and provide consent forms, advertising posters, pharmacy techs and everything else needed to administer the shots.
COVID-19 cases continued to reach record levels as Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday ordered restaurants, bars and other businesses closed for three weeks and banned many public gatherings to try to tame the spread of the disease. Three community hospital networks — Butler Health System, Main Line Health in Philadelphia and Geisinger Health System in Montour County — have had to postpone some nonemergency surgeries because of the surge.
Butler Hospital had 18 to 20 COVID-19 patients at the height of the outbreak in spring. That number now has risen to 58 patients, including 14 patients in the intensive care unit and 10 on ventilators, Chief Medical Officer David Rottinghaus said during a briefing Friday sponsored by the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, a Harrisburg advocacy group.
“It’s been a bit unnerving to see those numbers go up every day,” Dr. Rottinghaus said. “This is a difficult disease to treat. The lung damage, for want of a better word, is pretty incredible.”