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Key medical leaders in western Pennsylvania on Wednesday warned that there was no adequate vaccine supply to meet demand driven by expanded eligibility in the state, a letter said. strongly formulated from the group.
Leaders released the letter in response to state pressure to get more vaccines into guns, including people 65 and older and those with certain health conditions.
“We agree that the groups identified are essential in limiting the spread and damage of covid-19,” reads the letter, signed by 11 military medics representing UPMC, Allegheny Health Network, Excela and others. “However, we just don’t have adequate vaccine supplies or clear notification of when and how much to come to be able to meet this new and much larger group that can benefit.”
Pennsylvania Department of Health officials announced on Tuesday that anyone 65 years of age or older and people 16 to 64 years of age with certain pre-existing conditions are now eligible for the vaccine, in phase 1A. About 3.5 million Pennsylvanians fall into this category. The move was intended to align the state’s immunization plan with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state’s announcement sent dozens of people in the extended category 1A rush to immunization clinics, believing the state’s updated plan allowed them to show up and receive a vaccine.
For example, Tom Chakurda, a spokesperson for Excela Health in Westmoreland County, said Excel has seen a large wave of people inquiring about when they could come in for the shot.
“It was big enough that we had to change the verbiage on our website and Facebook,” he said, noting that one of the reasons his chief medical officer, Dr Carol Fox, was to agree with the letter.
“While the state has just announced that people aged 65 and over or those who suffer from a disease that puts them at risk of serious disease can now be vaccinated, our current supply of vaccines does not allow us to inoculate this group for the time being ”. executives wrote online.
Vaccine providers – primarily, at this point, health care systems and some pharmacies – simply do not have the vaccine supply to meet demand.
“Unless (expanded eligibility) comes with dramatic changes in the amount of vaccine not only physically here, but physically in the future, we won’t be able to meet this need,” Dr. Donald said. Yealy, UPMC senior medical director and chair of its emergency medicine department.
“My advice would be instead of thinking about hours or days based on yesterday’s announcement, think about the next few weeks or more planning,” he said.
Yealy signed the letter for UPMC, and he is one of 11 region health system leaders who are part of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Chief Medical Officers Consortium. The group formed early in the pandemic to try to resolve issues in a coordinated and transparent manner.
The health systems represented in the consortium are Allegheny Health Network, UPMC, Excela Health System, Butler Health System, Heritage Valley Health System, St. Clair Hospital, Washington Health System, the Pittsburgh VA Health System, Conemaugh Health System, Penn Highlands Healthcare and Indiana Regional Medical Center.
“By expanding that fits any category like they did, people got the feeling that, ‘OK, now it’s my turn, I also want to queue up quickly’, but actually, we are always working on… health care professionals, ”said Dr Don Whiting, chief medical officer of the Allegheny Health Network.
He said there was a misconception that providers “sit on top of a pile of vaccines” and hold them back for some reason.
Figures from the State Department of Health, he said, can give this false impression for a number of reasons, from a delay in communicating and uploading data to failure to keep up. not count scheduled vaccinations.
State data shows that around 37,100 people are partially vaccinated in Allegheny County and 8,700 are fully vaccinated. Data for Westmoreland County shows 9,101 people are partially vaccinated and 152 are fully vaccinated.
“Every drop that we have has to be administered over the next week and a half to two weeks,” Whiting said. “We have nothing left to plan.”
Yealy said the memo was not an indictment of state health officials who called for expanding the Phase One group to match federal guidelines.
“This is not to criticize the Commonwealth, but to say, ‘Here are the real steps that we can serve,’ he said.
Rather, the letter aimed to reinforce with the public that the vaccination will not be instantaneous.
“This is so the public understands that being part of this group doesn’t mean everyone can be immunized immediately,” Yealy said. “We still need to establish priorities and time. We want to vaccinate, and we will not let the vaccine go to waste – we will effectively arm it, but it has to get here first. “
Megan Guza is a writer for Tribune-Review. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, [email protected] or via Twitter .
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