Pa. officials hope direct shipment of covid vaccine to pharmacies will ease supply woes

Pennsylvania health officials hope additional covid-19 vaccines going directly from the federal government to some pharmacies will begin to chip away at their massive waitlists as millions remain to be vaccinated.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it would begin sending vaccines directly to states’ retail pharmacy partnership locations. In Pennsylvania, that means TopCo and Rite Aid pharmacies.

“We are glad that those doses will be in addition to the amount of vaccine currently being allotted to vaccine providers here in the commonwealth,” said Department of Health Senior Advisor Lindsey Mauldin.

She said it remains to be seen how many additional doses will be sent to Rite Aid and TopCo pharmacies but, “this will hopefully mean in the near future we can start to send those vaccines for other parts of our mission to vaccinate more eligible Pennsylvanians.”

Smaller pharmacies not part of the federal retail pharmacy program will continue to wait.

When Alex Micklow first heard the news that vaccine could go straight from manufacturers to pharmacies, he was relieved – it seemed like a “common sense” remedy to the endless delays he’s experienced in receiving doses at Leechburg Healthmart Pharmacy.

“Well, you’ve got to read the fine print,” Micklow said with a sigh, after realizing the Biden administration’s new directive seems to focus solely on major pharmacy chains rather than community pharmacies.

Micklow said most calls he receives are from people looking for the covid vaccine, amounting to between 50 and 100 calls every day. He hasn’t started a waiting list, though, because he doesn’t want to inadvertently place someone who needs the vaccine most at the back of the queue.

Leechburg Healthmart was approved to administer vaccines, but still hasn’t gotten its first allocation. At this point, thinking about how he would distribute doses most efficiently feels like a “theoretical exercise.”

Other pharmacies have received doses of the vaccine but are just unable to meet the need.

At The Medicine Shoppe in Latrobe, a voicemail message indicates that appointments for vaccination are booked through April.

At Pharmacist, Town & Country in New Kensington, Anthony Roperti said the pharmacy has decided not to administer vaccines at all right now, citing the overall shortage and rush. Tuesday’s announcement by the Biden administration, he said, won’t affect the pharmacy.

Still, he said, he gets dozens of calls every day from community members looking for an available dose.

Thinking about the larger vaccine chains receiving more doses from manufactures, he isn’t optimistic given how “haphazard” the rollout has gone thus far.

“I’m sure the line is going to be a mile long,” Roperti said. “It’s just going to be a nightmare, actually.”

Ed Christofano is slowly working through the 21,000-name waiting list he has of people who want the coronavirus vaccine through Hayden’s Pharmacy. He inoculated 1,670 people who qualify under the first phase of the state’s vaccination plan last month with the first shipment of doses he got.

“I have wasted zero,” said Christofano, pharmacist and owner. “No vaccinations expired under my watch.”

This week, he requested another 2,300 doses.

“I got zero, nothing,” he said.

The problem is availability, but it’s important to stay calm and be patient, he said. A barrage of phone calls to the pharmacies asking about status on the list only slow the process down.

“I know everyone is frustrated,” he said. “I’m doing my best to help those individuals. It is just a sheer logistical problem with supply and demand.”

He participates in a conference call with the state department of health every morning. During one of those recent calls, state officials discussed the possibility of having vaccines shipped directly from the supplier to the provider, bypassing any form of government, he said. Christofano would be in favor of that move as long as the vaccine providers follow the same requirements they do now as far as tracking the vaccines and reporting the information to the state.

“It would speed the process up,” he said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, he didn’t know when his next shipment would come in.

“We don’t know how much, we don’t know when, we don’t know by what means,” he said.

That has been a frequent complaint from pharmacies as well as Pennsylvania health officials, who say they are at the mercy of the feds when it comes to how much vaccine is coming to the state and when it will get there.

Mauldin said there are 4 million Pennsylvanians in Phase 1A of the vaccination plan, which includes most health care workers, anyone 65 or older and anyone aged 16 to 64 with certain health conditions and vulnerabilities.

“We are watching and waiting to see what comes down from the federal government,” she said. “Again, we have limited supply coming into Pennsylvania, and we’re getting those doses out.”