Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Pennsylvania will expand vaccination eligibility to all residents starting Monday, April 19.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health and the state COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force made the announcement during a press conference Wednesday morning.
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“All Pennsylvanians will be eligible to schedule vaccination appointments beginning April 19,” state health officials said.
Starting Wednesday, the state will begin a “special initiative” to vaccinate targeted industry workers.
Below is information from the Pennsylvania Department of Health on the accelerated phased rollout:
March 31 workers in the four targeted industries that Gov. Wolf and the Task Force announced on March 12:
–Law enforcement, which includes police, sheriffs and deputies, constables, corrections officers and staff, as well as probation and parole staff.
–Firefighters, including career and volunteer firefighters.
–Grocery Store workers, including all workers in supermarkets and grocery stores.
–Food and Agriculture workers, including all food processing company employees, including meat, poultry, and dairy processing, fresh fruit and vegetable packing operations, food manufacturing, all farmworkers, farm operators, and farm managers, including at urban agriculture operations.
April 5 all residents in Phase 1B will be eligible to start scheduling vaccination appointments.
April 12 all residents in Phase 1C will be eligible to start scheduling vaccination appointments.
April 19 all residents will be eligible to start scheduling vaccination appointments.
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It is unclear if there will be enough doses of vaccines in the state and Bucks County to meet the dates laid out, but state officials seemed confident.
“The vaccine landscape continues to evolve as the federal government is increasing allocations to more retail pharmacy chains across the country,” Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said. “To ensure that vaccine continues to get to people efficiently and equitably, Pennsylvania is adapting its plan to allow workers in targeted industries to access any of the three vaccines available at providers throughout the state, and to accelerate our eligibility for remaining phases of the state’s vaccination plan.
Credit: PA Internet News Service
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Beam added that there are an average of 83,000 doses administered per day in the Keystone State.
“It’s time to open eligibility to more Pennsylvanians so providers can continue to fill appointments and efficiently, effectively, and equitably vaccinate more people every day,” Beam said.
President Joe Biden pledged to make every adult in the country eligible for vaccination by May 1.
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Wednesday is the deadline from Gov. Tom Wolf that counties are required to have scheduled all Phase 1A-qualified residents on their their lists for shots. The vaccines don’t have to be administered by the end of March, but appointments have to be scheduled.
Bucks County officials said earlier this week their Phase 1A appointments are being scheduled for dates going into late April.
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“On Tuesday, last-call emails will be sent to everyone who pre-registered as 1A-eligible with the county – about 160,000 in all — to make sure nobody was missed. Anyone who has already been vaccinated or scheduled an appointment should disregard the notice,” county officials said.
Close to 43,000 vaccine doses were administered last week in Bucks County through all providers, including the county-overseen mass vaccination clinics in Bensalem Township, Bristol Township, Newtown Township, and East Rockhill Township. The high-profile county clinics administered 13,847 total doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
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As part of plans to acceleration vaccine distribution, the state department of health is shifting vaccine doses to a smaller number of providers in the coming weeks. The move will leave Lower Bucks Hospital in Bristol Township without doses.
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As of Tuesday, Bucks County had 82,175 people partially vaccinated and 81,436 fully vaccinated. There are about 628,000 residents in Bucks County.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct day for the expansion of vaccinations for all residents.
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