Pa. vaccine provider map gets face-lift, officials still aim for May 1 open eligibility

The Pennsylvania Department of Health appears to be inching toward a more centralized system for finding and making covid-19 vaccine appointments as officials work to make a map of providers more accessible and more interactive.

Health officials touted the updates to the map, which right now is the sole place to find an all-encompassing listing of pharmacies, hospitals, doctors and health centers with available vaccine.

That map — now hosted on the Google Maps platform and thus more mobile-friendly, officials said — will also now show the number of first-dose vaccines the state allocated to each provider at the start of each week.

Future functions will show when providers have available appointments and when appointments are scheduled for, said Keara Klinepeter, executive deputy secretary of health.

Doses, however, don’t equal appointments, Klinepeter said, and providers are still where people should turn for information about scheduling an appointment.

The improvements are part of the department’s push to open vaccination eligibility to all adults in the state by May 1.

As of Thursday, just under 4 million doses of the vaccine have been administered across the state, and just under 1.4 million people are fully vaccinated, according to Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam. There are about 1.2 million people who are partially vaccinated.

About 24% — about 2.6 million people — of the state’s adult population is at least partially vaccinated.

Health officials touted those numbers at a Thursday press conference, pointing to federal data ranking Pennsylvania second in the country in terms of doses administered per 100,000 residents over the past seven days.

“That is proof that the pace of vaccination is accelerating here,” Beam said. “We are making progress.”

There is no set timeframe for the state to move out of the first phase of its tiered vaccination plan, which includes health care workers, long-term care residents, people over age 65 and those 16 to 64 with certain health conditions.

There are two more tiers in Phase 1 – phases 1B and 1C. Phase 1B includes a slew of essential workers, some of whom Gov. Tom Wolf has said are next in line for the state’s allocations of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Wolf specifically mentioned police, firefighters, corrections employees, meat processing and agriculture workers and grocery store employees.

Phase 1C includes sectors like water and wastewater, food service, finance, information technology, government workers, communications, energy and public health.

Beam has said she expects the vaccination process will go faster for phases 1B and 1C.

Phase 2 is the general public, and the goal is to have everyone eligible by May 1.

“Eligibility does not mean that vaccinations will be immediately available,” Beam said. “It will take time to get shots in the arms of everyone who wants a vaccine.”