AHN, UPMC to vaccinate 25,000 people at drive-thru clinics

About 25,000 people will receive a covid-19 vaccine at multiple drive-thru clinics throughout Western Pennsylvania in the coming week.

Allegheny Health Network and UPMC, the region’s two largest health systems, announced partnerships Wednesday with the Allegheny County Health Department to provide Johnson & Johnson shots to the public.

AHN and the health department will partner this Friday and Saturday to vaccinate 13,000 people in Phase 1A and 1B. This two-day clinic will be held at Next Tier Connect @ Pittsburgh East, an office building and campus near AHN’s Forbes Hospital in Monroeville.

The clinic will be the largest in the region to date to supply the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine.

Those interested in receiving the vaccine can visit AHN.org/coronavirus or call 412-DOCTORS to schedule an appointment.

“In what we are hopeful will be the final phase of our pandemic response, we are extremely pleased to partner with the county to provide a large number of people in our community with access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” said Dr. Imran Qadeer, chief medical officer of Allegheny General Hospital and a leader of AHN’s covid vaccination operations.

The clinic is taking place in collaboration with Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the Pennsylvania National Guard.

Pittsburgh Mills clinic planned for April 14-15

Another 12,000 people will be vaccinated next week at a two-day, drive-thru clinic at the Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer. The clinic, on Wednesday and Thursday, plans to vaccinate up to 700 people every hour, officials said. It’s being held in the vacant Sears Grand store.

The clinic will operate like a pit crew: patients can drive up to one of 35 vaccination tents, where they’ll register, complete a quick clinical screening and receive a dose.

The whole process will take two to three minutes, said Mark Sevco, president of UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Then, patients will be directed to a nearby parking lot where they’ll park for 15 minutes for observation.

The clinic is being hosted by UPMC and the Pittsburgh Penguins, in partnership with the Allegheny County Health Department.

It will be the largest single-dose clinic the health care giant has hosted.

Sevco said UPMC and the health department have committed to do another clinic two weeks from the first, to administer another 12,000 doses at Pittsburgh Mills.

The clinic was made possible by 12,000 Johnson & Johnson doses allocated to the Allegheny County Health Department, confirmed just Tuesday, the day before UPMC announced the clinic. Sevco said the two entities have been collaborating to organize more large-scale vaccination events that could occur over a regular basis, allowing vaccines to be distributed more quickly and to the most people.

“That’s really the most important,” Sevco said. “This is really a race of the vaccine versus the variants, and we really encourage everyone to sign up. Covid still exists, and we need to deploy the vaccine rapidly.”

“We’re grateful for receiving those vaccines,” Sevco added. “It’s above and beyond the vaccines we are getting for all of our existing sites.”

UPMC in March opened its first drive-thru clinic in Allegheny County at Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry. That clinic was targeted to northern Allegheny County communities and parts of Beaver and Butler counties.

But the Pittsburgh Mills clinic is much larger, Sevco noted: while 500 first doses of Moderna were administered in a day at the Lemieux complex, 6,000 Johnson & Johnson shots will be given each day of the two-day clinic next week.

Sevco said UPMC had evaluated several potential locations for the larger clinic and found Pittsburgh Mills to be the best in terms of size, scope and parking availability. Its location near Route 28 makes it easily accessible to a broader geographic population.

He said people on UPMC waiting lists from seven counties have been invited.

Drive-thru clinics are becoming “best practice” for massive dose administrations, Sevco said. They are more efficient and time-effective, and are easier for patients with ambulatory or mobility issues.

The announcement of the clinics coincides with the first week of Pennsylvania’s Phase 1B in vaccine eligibility, which includes first responders, people in congregate settings such as shelters and jails and many other populations. By the time the clinic opens next week, Phase 1C also will have begun, opening vaccine eligibility to other “essential” workers.

Sevco said the clinic at the Pittsburgh Mills next week will be open to all of these phases — and the second clinic two weeks later will be open to everyone. All Pennsylvania adults will be eligible for vaccine April 19.

“We’re open access for this event,” Sevco said. “The good news is that we have 12,000 new patient appointments that are open right now.”

Appointments for the Pittsburgh Mills clinic opened Wednesday morning. People can register by visiting UPMC’s online registration portal at vaccine.upmc.com or calling 833-676-1995.