How a small pharmacy in Pennsylvania vaccinates thousands

SCHWENKSVILLE, Pa. (Reuters) – Behind the counter at the Skippack Pharmacy in Schwenksville, near Philadelphia, owner Mayank Amin has been working late at night since his independent pharmacy received state approval to administer COVID vaccines. 19 end of January.

There are thousands of emails to sort and phone calls to the field, supplies to organize, appointments to schedule.

Amin, known as Dr Mak, set up a Super Bowl Sunday vaccination clinic at the local fire station that drew more than 1,000 people who kept their shootings appointments despite the snow this that day.

“It was like a party there,” Amin, 36, recalls in an interview with Reuters in late February. “It was something you never could have imagined in your life, seeing four strangers carrying someone on a wheelchair, pushing them through the mud and entering the building.”

Thanks to the deep connections to their communities and the trust they have been able to build over the years, some local pharmacists are helping to reach people who might be reluctant to get vaccinated or who may not be aware of the efforts. immunization, said Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“These local pharmacies are a really important voice of trust,” Kates said.

The vaccine rollout, which the administration of former President Donald Trump left to states to carry out without a federal plan or sufficient funding, has proven to be choppy. Under President Joe Biden, supply has increased but some barriers to distribution and access persist.

Montgomery County, where Schwenksville is located, has one of the highest per capita vaccination rates in the state, according to the state Department of Health website. Pennsylvania ranks 28th out of 50 states with 18% of residents having at least one vaccine, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. (tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR)

SURPRISE

On a gray Saturday morning in late February, Amin donned a Superman costume, the vestige of past Halloweens that he now sometimes wears for vaccinations, and drove through frozen suburbs to deliver two COVID-19 vaccines to patients at home. .

“What a surprise!” Gail Bertsch, 74, said Amin and some unexpected volunteers knocked on her door. She and her husband James, who suffers from dementia, both received injections.

“I can’t believe we can actually do this,” she said.

Amin has also vaccinated people by appointment at his pharmacy, including running a special clinic for pregnant women and another for children with underlying health conditions.

Among them was the pharmacist’s nephew, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, a disease that causes tumors to form in the brain, nerves and other parts of the body.

Some 3,000 people have received the first injections of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech through Skippack Pharmacy since early February, Amin said. Among the roughly 1,000 residents who received a second dose over the weekend were Chester and Martha Pish, 97 and 98, respectively, married for 78 years.

After securing a large supply of vaccines, the pharmacist said he plans to run several clinics this coming weekend.

The effort was tedious for Amin and riddled with obstacles, including organizing vaccine stocks – which sometimes come within hours of notice, a side effect of supply chain hiccups that is among the problems. which hindered the deployment.

The young pharmacist finds his pregnant wife only on weekends for health reasons and spends the week with his parents in Lansdale. The couple will welcome their first child in May.

“I want to be there when my child is born and I want to make sure all my people are vaccinated by then,” he told Reuters. “If I can, this would be my dream.”

COME TOGETHER

Pandemic trials and now the drive to get the vaccine in people’s arms united his Montgomery County community behind the young pharmacist.

On a recent Friday, five volunteers converged on the back of the store. They filled out spreadsheets with patient contact information and checked the inventory of immunization supplies.

Amin has only one other full-time employee, Jacquelyn Ziegler, and two pharmacy internship students, Erica Mabry and Isabelle Lawler. But he can count on dozens of volunteers, including family members, to answer phones and help less tech-savvy patients navigate the online system to make an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine.

“It’s just amazing how everyone sort of filtered into this unique space,” said event planner Courtney Marengo, one of Amin’s volunteers.

Amin said he had no plans to own a pharmacy. But it has moved to fill a void left when Skippack, a 50-year-old local institution, was acquired by national giant CVS in 2018. The chain acquired the assets of Skippack Pharmacy but not the physical space. Amin reopened it before the pandemic in hopes of keeping the resource in the community.

“I feel like sometimes things fall between your knees at certain times in your life,” he said. “You may not have planned for this to happen, but things are happening for the right reason.”