Acting Secretary of Health Allison Beam.
Unlike her predecessor, no medical experience.
Unlike her predecessor, genuine OEM parts.
Posted on 03/04/2021 11:32:35 AM PST by lightman
The state’s health secretary said the decision to earmark the state’s initial batches of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to school employees and child care workers is not delaying senior citizens and those with high-risk health conditions from their turn at getting the vaccine.
Rather, Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said it is intended to vaccinate educators without putting additional stress on the efforts underway by hospitals or providers to get shots in the arms of those in the Phase 1A of the state’s vaccination program.
“We know that there is significant interest among all Pennsylvanians about when they will be vaccinated, this special initiative involving teachers and childcare workers will not delay that process,” she said during a virtual news conference with reporters. “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.”
Gov. Tom Wolf, along with the COVID-19 vaccination task force, announced on Wednesday plans to begin administering as soon as Wednesday some 120,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that the state received this week to teachers, support staff and child care workers.
Pa.’s teacher, school staff vaccination program to launch on March 10
The state’s 28 intermediate units will administer the program along with the help of the Pennsylvania National Guard and AMI Expeditionary Healthcare for public and private schools as well as charter schools.
The state’s retail pharmacy partners will be handling the outreach and administration of the vaccine to those who work at licensed child care centers, Beam said.
To date, she said more than 1 million Pennsylvanians have received their first dose of the Moderna or Pfizer two-dose vaccine and nearly 830,000 are fully vaccinated.
Although the addition of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will help boost those numbers, Beam said, “I want to be clear that the vaccine supply is still not able to keep up with demand at this time.”
Acting Education Secretary Noe Ortega said the opportunity to vaccinate all our pre-K to grade 12 teachers, school staff and child care workers will support a safe and quicker return to in-person teaching and learning across Pennsylvania.
“It has been and will continue to be my agency’s and the Wolf Administration’s collective priority to reopen classrooms and schools as soon as possible,” Ortega said. “This vaccine, along with a comprehensive mitigation strategies ... provides us with yet another tool that will help create the conditions for that to happen.”
Ortega said updated school guidance about instructional models now recommend in-person instruction in counties with low community transmission of COVID-19; hybrid instructional models in counties with moderate transmission levels; and remote, hybrid or in-person instruction for elementary school students as well as those with disabilities and English language learners who have shown to be more susceptible to learning loss.
“Amid the strategy we have now with vaccination along with other mitigation efforts, those are all in place to create safe conditions for teachers to return and offer in-person learning,” Ortega said. “With regard to mandates, the state does not plan to mandate any in-person instruction except to recommend it. Please keep in mind that we are a locally controlled state and many of these decisions are made at the local level.”
Beam said the state hopes that with this initial batch of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and a second large batch expected in a couple of weeks, that all school employees who choose to get this vaccine will have received it by the end of March.
Acting Secretary of Health Allison Beam.
Unlike her predecessor, no medical experience.
Unlike her predecessor, genuine OEM parts.
But no brain.
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I guess it would be too much to ask why the Pennsylvania Governor couldn’t limit the teachers eligible to CURRENTLY receive the vaccine to teachers with either dangerous comorbidities or those age 50 or more. That’s how Florida does it and it’s working well.
DUH!
Nothing surprising there...
Communists always protect their most loyal party members...
When I was a kid almost 70 years ago the first people to receive the Salk vaccine were the kids, not the staff.
kids almost never get covid, they don’t spread it, and only a couple in the entire U.S. have ever died from it ... a FAR different situation than polio, which TARGETED children ... covid targets the old and unwell ...
I’ll betcha less than half of these critters actually get the shots.
Sheesh what happened to the last one. Hard to keep up they trans ition so fast...
I heard Rachel sure can kook...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EqFVWzOfN8
So why are so many schools closed? To protect the staff from giving it to each other? Has there been a rash of teachers and staff contracting the virus? Or is the teacher's union directing this policy?
If I’m not mistaken, Freepers have commented that PA has been very hard to get the vaccines if your are a senior citizen.
Thanks for posting about Allison Moon Beam. Where do they come from? Sheesh.
That mask must be covering her two mouths.
Beam said, “I want to be clear that the vaccine supply is still not able to keep up with demand at this time.”
(Giving the vaccine to educators) is not delaying senior citizens and those with high-risk health conditions from their turn at getting the vaccine.
In my Florida county, over half the 65+ population has gotten at least one shot.
Distribution should be based on a medical/scientific basis.
The former health secretary didn't make any real effort to roll out the first batches of vaccines effectively. Dr. Levine's office made up a list of pharmacies and medical facilities that were carrying the moderns and pfizer vaccines and then published it without checking with the people distributing the vaccines to see if those places were on the list of recipients. Then the health department made up vague rules on how certain doses were to be held for certain categories of people, which were either never communicated or outright ignored by the places actually offering the vaccine. But wait... There's more.
Each place that was offering vaccine doses was left to it's own devices to come up with a way of scheduling appointments. No central registry or cross checking, usually the places set up an online scheduler. So, younger people signed up at dozens of sites hoping to get a dose anywhere and the senior citizens who don't understand technology well were crowded out. Because of the no-shows and bad lists, thousands of doses spoiled before giving out. I think there were also cases of places being punished for trying to get doses into willing people that would otherwise spoil because the facilities weren't going off the list of approved recipients.
The new Health Secretary was left an absolute mess. She's doing better, she's being up front about the mistakes, actually taking questions from the press rather than selectively answering what she wants and claiming transphobia whenever someone points out a bad job, and she trying to communicate and work through the missteps, but she has a huge hole to dig out of.
channelling vaccine doses to places where it's most impactful is one of her initiatives. For better or worse, it's a deliberate plan and it's better than pretending the previous plan was working.
“With regard to mandates, the state does not plan to mandate any in-person instruction except to recommend it. Please keep in mind that we are a locally controlled state and many of these decisions are made at the local level.”
My mom feared that my brother would be sent off to Vietnam to fight and possibly die in a war.
It’s IMPOSSIBLE to get a vaccination in Pennsylvania if you are a senior citizen. I’m 67 and have been trying for weeks to get one.
So, now the priority group for the J&J vaccine are school employees and kids. A 30-year-old teacher and her 10-year-old students are more likely to get sick and die than I am? How is this fair? How does this make any sense.
This is screwed up Pennsylvania government looking out for the members of the teacher’s union before the disposable elderly, apparently.
Good for your governor and county people.
Surely all those healthy young adults with a 99.999% survival rate wouldn’t want to kill Grandma?....
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