The Wyoming County Fairgrounds in Meshoppen Township is the probable location for a mass drive-thru COVID vaccination clinic. The effort must be coordinated with the state Department of Health, officials for which report limited resources and not enough doses.
By Rick Hiduk
(Exclusive to EndlessMtnLifestyles.com readers)
Wyoming County officials were among those tuned in to a teleconference hosted this morning by Tom McGroarty, public health preparedness coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH). Those in smaller counties feel left in the dark as COVID vaccines are finally being delivered and were hoping for at least enough information to start preparing for the next phase of coronavirus inoculations.
Technically, most of Pennsylvania is still in Phase 1A, which has been extended by continuing modifications at the federal level as to who exactly who belongs in that group. Residents age 65 and over with certain underlying conditions have been moved from 1C to 1A, but the increase in those who are eligible does not equal more shots in arms.
“We all know we need the vaccine,” said McGroarty. “It’s just not available.” Presently, 140,000 doses of the vaccine are earmarked for all of Pennsylvania each week. With two shots needed to complete the vaccination, that translates to 70,000 people served.
Wyoming County EMA director Gene Dziak asked a number of questions up front, trying to pinpoint some of the logistics that would be involved if the go-ahead is given by the state to conduct drive-through vaccination clinics.
“Is the state going to supply us with a contractor, or is the county supposed to go out and get the contractors and set this up?” Dziak (below) asked. “If I knew what direction this was going, we could be ready to push the button.”
“We hope to get better direction from the federal government within the next few days,” McGroarty responded. Beyond that, “I don’t have an answer for you.”
McGroarty noted that the Thursday teleconferences are the best way that he has to get current information out to the most people simultaneously. The DOH has been working with Pike County officials to set up the region’s first drive-through clinic there, and McGroarty noted that there will no doubt be lessons learned from the event before taking the clinic to Sullivan County the following weekend.
“That’s a week between calls,” Dziak shot back. “Do we need to get volunteers? Who’s going to monitor the vehicles for 15 minutes (to look for adverse reactions to the shots)? Somebody’s got to get us some answers.”
“It will be community based. It may be a combination of everything that you said,” McGroarty replied. “We had a contractor help us with community-based testing, and maybe we’ll have that again.”
Dziak’s remaining questions concerned who would be qualified to conduct various elements of a vaccine clinic. He was told by John Campos, executive director of EMS of Northeast Pennsylvania, that EMTs would be useful, but they have to take a course to become certified to handle registration and administration.
“All of the ALS personnel have to complete a one-hour training program that has to do with the COVID vaccine itself. They also have to be signed off for this by their service medical director to be validated to administer the vaccine,” Campos explained. “It’s a voluntary thing on the medic’s part. Not everybody wants to do this.”
Until senior citizens were added the 1A, that phase was reserved for hospital staff and other front-line personnel. Most medical facilities are reporting that the inoculation of staff members who wanted the vaccine is almost completed, the exceptions being Pike and Sullivan counties. The mass clinics being considered at the moment would help to complete Phase 1 with the priority being on the remaining 1A participants not in nursing homes or other senior facilities.
A meeting participant from Lackawanna County said, “Moving 65 and older into 1A is wonderful, but the information is not getting out to them. The press has done a good job of letting people know that they are eligible, but there’s no place for them to call.”
Tim Knapp, emergency management director for Pike County, looked to that county’s Area Agency on Aging to get names and contact information for senior citizens and has four staff members making calls to schedule them for vaccines.
Knapp also offered some encouragement to those trying to imagine how to properly staff such a clinic based on his experience with drive-thru testing sites there. “You’ll see that your healthcare partners will step up and handle a lot of that stuff. They want to help,” he stated. “I would worry about the big stuff. Get people registered. You’ll be surprised to see how many people will help you. The EMS folks we need to do this is kind of minimal.”
Though clinic coordination may differ slightly from one county to the next, McGroarty cautioned, “We need to work together because we have limited resources, including generators, internet access, iPads or iPhones to scan information, keep track of whose getting it, and how it’s being stored.”
McGroarty encouraged participants to visit the vaccination clinics in Pike or Sullivan counties to see how they are conducted and use those operations as templates for their own counties. Those two counties were selected for these trial runs because they don’t have medical facilities. “There is a requirement for equity,” he explained. “Pike and Sullivan counties were not being treated fairly because they don’t have hospitals, but the state has corrected that.”
Campos suggested that officials in the smaller counties work now to secure a single site for their respective clinics. “There’s a high probability in a smaller county with fewer ALS available that those doing the administration would come from another county. We don’t want to take an EMT service out of service.”
John Kloss, executive director of the Eastern PA EMS Council told meeting participants to utilize their EMS councils as they make preparations for an eventual clinic. “We’ve created independent contractor forms for the paramedics who will be participating and can handle payments,” he noted.
McGroarty also offered his services on a more personal level. “I am willing to go to every county and meet in one room to make sure that we are all on the same page,” he stated. “This can’t be done on the phone. Everybody doing their own thing does not work.”
Dziak will be traveling to Pike County this Saturday where the vaccine clinic will be conducted at Delaware Valley High School. He admitted that the teleconference was frustrating in the sense that so few details were divulged. But it not deter his commitment to making sure Wyoming County is prepared.
“I want to see how they are attempting to run their vaccination,” said Dziak. “My priority is to have this ready to go next week,” Dziak remarked. Elements that have to be coordinated in advance include soliciting volunteers to handle data entry people, qualified medical personnel to administer the vaccines, staffing a monitoring crew with EMTs experienced in vaccines and allergic reactions, and the logistics of storing the Moderna vaccine, which must be kept at 32 degrees or less.
Dziak will continue to work with Tyler Hospital CEO Ann Marie Stevens, with whom he has confered regularly on the inoculation of the first 1A group and to prepare for the eventuality of a mass clinic. “Tyler has been doing the 1As in Wyoming County, and they have gone above and beyond with making this happen,” Dziak maintained. At present, he is looking at the Wyoming County Fairgrounds as the likely location for a clinic.
Vaccines will, of course, be offered by other providers, but the doses are in short supply. Dziak noted that Weis Markets began taking appointments this week and is already booked for the supply on hand.
In Bradford County, Guthrie Hospital in Sayre opened a vaccination clinic yesterday but appears to operating under New York State guidelines, which make all residents over 65 eligible but does not include those with pre-existing conditions. Appointments, which were filled in about two hours, also allows shots for New York state residents, where the vaccine supply has already been depleted.
“We are unsure what led them to ultimately choose to use this model,” said Bradford County public safety and planning director Matt Williams. “It likely limited access to Bradford County residents to vaccinations.” Williams is hopeful, as supply increases, that a site more central to Bradford County residents can be established for a second clinic.
The COVID vaccine clinic in Sullivan County is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 30, but details on locations and times have not yet been confirmed. Sullivan County residents who believe that they are eligible for a vaccine at this time should check into www.sullivancounty-pa.us daily for updated information on the COVID information page.
Susquehanna County emergency management officials are looking to conduct a vaccination clinic at the Harford Fairgrounds in March.