Officials: 41K Pa. health care workers vaccinated; long-term care facilities up next week

About 41,400 health care workers have received covid-19 vaccinations since last week, Heath Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said Wednesday.

Levine said hospitals are vaccinating their own workers, and are also responsible for administering doses to health care workers in their communities that are not affiliated with hospitals – including emergency medical service workers, non-affiliated physicians and other front-line staff. She instructed hospitals to reach out to those outside agencies and begin coordinating their vaccinations.

“As hospitals are able to vaccinate their high-risk workers, it is very important that they continue to vaccinate health care workers facing the same risks in their own workplace,” she said.

While EMS workers wear personal protective equipment, Levine said, “they’re walking into unknown situations and they’re really our front-line responders.”

Immunizations will likely be picking up even greater speed now that the Moderna vaccine is also circulating, Levine said. Moderna doses will be sent to more rural hospitals in the state, which may not have as much of the ultra-cold freezer capacity the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires.

Levine said the administration is still working on plans for distributing vaccines to priority groups, including prison inmates and the broad category of “essential workers.” Long-term care residents and employees will start receiving vaccines Monday, through a partnership between the federal government, CVS Pharmacy and Walgreens.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week published new guidelines for group “1b,” another tier of the population to receive priority vaccinations that includes people over the age of 75, front-line essential workers and some other groups. Levine said Pennsylvania is revising its own distribution plan to fall in line with the CDC guidance.

“We are working on how we will do that. We are planning on partnering with many different entities to get those vaccines done,” Levine said, saying the Department of Health will likely work with pharmacies and health care providers and may set up some mass vaccination clinics.

The speed at which the state can vaccinate everyone who needs and wants one will be largely dependent on how many doses Pennsylvania receives from the federal government, she said, and it will be months before there is enough to immunize the general public.

“What it indicates,” Levine said, “is how important it is for all of us over the holidays – Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s – that we have to stay the course and avoid large and small gatherings and stay at home and be with our families remotely. I know that that’s a tremendous sacrifice, but that’s what we need to do to stop the spread and make sure we don’t have another rebound in January.”

Levine said she and Gov. Tom Wolf are watching case levels to determine if additional mitigation strategies will be necessary after the current order expires Jan. 4.

There are currently 6,142 covid-19 patients hospitalized statewide, with 1,263 in intensive care and 764 on ventilators, according to Pennsylvania’s covid data dashboard. The state reported 9,605 new cases Wednesday, bringing the total number of cases to 581,156. There were 230 new deaths reported, bringing the statewide total to 14,442 deaths from covid.