How vaccine clinics will work for Pa. teachers

Mar. 4—At least one vaccination site in each of Pennsylvania's educational regions will be available to teachers and school staff, state officials said Thursday. The clinics could be up and running as early as next week.

Child care workers who are not associated with one of the state's 29 Intermediate Units could start receiving phone calls today from the state's federal pharmacy partners — Rite Aid, Walmart and Topco — about scheduling vaccination appointments, said Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam.

Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday that teachers and other school staff will be eligible for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that received emergency authorization over the weekend. The Department of Health expects to receive about 94,600 doses of the single-shot vaccine this week.

However, Beam said the state has been told the next allocation of Johnson & Johnson vaccines won't arrive for up to two weeks.

When the vaccine supply arrives, "we will be ready to quickly get it into arms," she said, noting that it is her understanding initial shipments will be followed by roughly two weeks of little to no Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

By the end of the month, however, allocations to the state are slated to be at or above what is initially headed this way.

Beam said prioritizing teachers for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will not hinder the vaccination process for those in phase 1A, the first phase of Pennsylvania's vaccine rollout plan.

"This ... will not delay that process," Beam said. "It allows us to continue efforts to vaccinate people in phase 1A while also setting up this special initiative to get kids back into school."

Allocations to the individual Intermediate Units will be based on responses to surveys sent out to teachers and staff at schools within each unit's footprint.

The survey will gauge how many already received the vaccine and how many want to take part in the statewide initiative, Beam said.

Wolf has said rough estimates indicate there are about 200,000 eligible educators and school staff across the state, though that does not take into account those already vaccinated under the phase 1A guidelines or those who do not want the vaccine.

Randy Padfield, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency director, said the clinics should be able to vaccinate about 500 people per day, "with some clinics in IUs with larger numbers of educators and support staff being able to support up to 1,000 doses a day."

For the most part, he said, vaccination clinics will be held at the actual Intermediate Unit buildings, though some accommodations will be made in areas where an IU covers a large swath of the state.

Aaron Skrbin, director of safety and security for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), said the AIU will be working with the Pennsylvania National Guard and AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to schedule and administer doses. The AIU is preparing to inoculate about 7,400 in just the first round of doses, which will begin as soon as March 10.

Skrbin said Wednesday the AIU doesn't have an exact date or specifics about how many will be vaccinated per day at the AIU headquarters in Homestead but has developed a "blueprint" for how the clinics will function.

Vaccinating educators does not mean schools will be mandated to return to in-person learning, said Acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega. He noted that Pennsylvania is a "local control" state, meaning decisions affecting individual districts are made at the local, not state, level.

The guidance given by the Department of Education, though, will change, he said.

Previously, hybrid learning — a mix of remote and in-person learning — was recommended for districts in parts of the state with even low levels of community transmission. Now, in-person classes will be recommended for districts in low transmission areas, hybrid for areas seeing moderate transmission and remote learning in areas seeing high rates of spread.

"After a year of unprecedented educational shifts and tensions," Ortega said, "we are closer to relieving some constraints and increasing access to in-person learning opportunities, services, programs and supports that will positively impact entire communities."

Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@triblive.com or via Twitter .