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SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – Cars lined the Dorney Park parking lot on Wednesday for a mass vaccination clinic.
This involved two weeks of planning for Lehigh Valley Health Network to get the operation going.
“We are very excited about this, we are happy that our community of 75 and over is willing to participate in this kind of effort,” said Dr Alex Benjamin, LVHN.
The LVHN is no stranger to running mass vaccination sites, as it holds a driving flu clinic every year, but doctors say that a COVID vaccination site presents a few more obstacles.
Dr Timothy Friel, infectious disease specialist for LVHN, said the biggest challenge was not knowing when they would receive doses or how many they would receive.
“It makes planning mass vaccination campaigns like this very, very difficult,” he told WFMZ’s Ali Reid.
In addition, there must be a special parking lot for people to wait for the mandatory 15 minutes after receiving the vaccine.
All appointments for the drive-thru clinic were quickly filled, and LVHN plans to vaccinate around 1,000 people, aged 75 and over.
All registrants also received a follow-up appointment to receive their second dose of Moderna vaccine in a few weeks.
“This is really the only type of promised vaccine that we are aware of right now, according to the state. The second doses will be sustained,” Benjamin said.
LVHN said it has the capacity to vaccinate at least 5,000 per day, when an adequate supply is available.
The St. Luke Health Network also operates mass vaccination sites at its 11 hospitals. A spokesperson says they can immunize up to 5,000 people a day, but the supply has been limited for them too, so currently around 3,000 doses are given daily.
“It has been frustrating and disappointing because we have all relied on the federal government throughout this process to make sure we have the vaccines,” Governor Tom Wolf said at a press conference Tuesday.
About 4 million people in Pennsylvania are eligible to get the vaccine now, in group 1A, which means 8 million doses are expected to be deployed in the first phase.
Right now, the state is far behind.
“We have received about 1.5 million vaccines and since this is a two-shot cycle, that means we have enough for 750,000 Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said.
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