Pennsylvania Ping!
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Posted on 03/25/2021 4:17:42 AM PDT by lightman
HARRISBURG — The Wolf administration is refusing to disclose details of wasted coronavirus vaccine doses, including how many have been discarded by each provider, citing a decades-old law that it has frequently used to shield the public from scrutinizing its pandemic response.
The state Department of Health recently denied a public records request by Spotlight PA seeking documentation of vaccine doses that providers did not administer because of expiration, damage, or other factors. The request did not seek any patient information.
Providers are required to self-report to state health officials whenever a dose of vaccine is “compromised,” and explain why. Those discarded for any reasons other than expiration or broken vials must also be accompanied by an incident report.
But state health officials declined to provide any of those records in response to Spotlight PA’s request, citing the Disease Prevention and Control Law.
The 1955 law gives the state broad authority to keep contagious disease information confidential, like details that could potentially identify individuals. But legal experts said it also gives the state discretion over what records to make public in the interest of transparency.
“What’s really important to note here is that the DPCL grants the Department of Health considerable discretion to release anything when it serves the public interest,” said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel at Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (of which Spotlight PA is a member). “They are choosing not to do that. And they have never justified that in the context of a Right-to-Know denial.”
Spotlight PA plans to appeal the state’s decision.
A spokesperson for the state Health Department said just 1,589 of the more than 2.3 million doses administered as of Feb. 26 — or just .06% — were reported by providers as wasted, mostly due to vials broken in handling, syringe issues, such as bent or broken needles, or clients refusing after the vaccine dose was drawn.
But information released by the state does not reveal which providers were responsible for the wasted doses or if any were responsible for a disproportionate share. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on why more details could not be made public.
A report by ProPublica published in January found inconsistent reporting requirements to document wasted doses across the states, and no enforcement of the federal reporting mandate, leaving providers with little incentive to comply.
State health officials across the country have generally played down wasted doses, according to an Associated Press report last week. The federal government has so far declined to provide a total number of wasted doses nationally, according to the report.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has come under scrutiny for his handling of the vaccine rollout, even among his most ardent Democratic supporters. And while Wolf has long said government transparency was a priority of his tenure, his administration has repeatedly used the Disease Prevention and Control Law, with little explanation, to block the release of records related to its pandemic response.
In the first days and weeks of the pandemic, former state Health Secretary Rachel Levine cited the law as a reason for withholding the number of COVID-19 tests the state was conducting and the number of cases in each nursing home. Under pressure, the state later reversed course, raising questions about its original reliance on the law to block the information.
Numerous news organizations have been denied records related to the administration’s response because of its reliance on the law. As a result, the public may never have a complete understanding of the administration’s at-times inconsistent statements and secretive decisions, Spotlight PA reported in August.
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
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Try to find out what the “food” category is on a public school’s Cafeteria budget/agenda ...
Crime never rests. does it?
The vaccine rollout in this state has been a disaster. We are still in the same stage of vaccinations (groups of eligible people) that we were in in December.
Crime never rests.
But PA’s legislature does.
Wanna bet part of the reason is because uptake figs are so bad?
Just a hunch.
Wolf and Levine are about as bad as Cuomo when it comes to killing the elderly. It’s disgusting that anyone in Congress voted to confirm. Murkowski and Collins would rather virtue signal than give a crap about the nursing home deaths.
Well lookie @ dis..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
The Jacobson v. Massachusetts decision made clear that the government could mandate vaccination, arguing that collective good sometimes outweighs individual rights.
Holy crap! They’ll use it, if they can.
The GOP up in Harrisburg is comatose.
That is how I got my dose in CA, even though I am only 39. My companies Safety Manager contacted the CVS across the street, and every afternoon we find out how many doses would otherwise go unused and tossed, and people that want to get jabbed go over.
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