Updated Pa. vaccination plan adds new phase for more essential employees

Pennsylvania officials continue to retool the state’s vaccination plan to fall in line with recommendations from federal groups and further define who can get the vaccine and when, releasing the fourth iteration of plan on Friday afternoon.

“It will take several months before there is vaccine available for everyone,” said Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine. “We have said that some time, maybe late spring, certainly by the summer, we will be able to go on to Phase 2, or the general public.”

Across the state, more than 235,000 people have received at least the first dose of the covid-19 vaccine. The state remains in Phase 1A of the two-phase plan.

This first phase includes long-term care residents, emergency medical personnel, nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, dentists, dental hygienists, chiropractors, therapists, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and more. It also includes clinical personnel working in congregate settings, like jails, prisons and schools.

Levine said Phase 1A includes around 1 million health care personnel and skilled nursing and long-term care employees and residents.

Levine and Gov. Tom Wolf both reiterated that much of the vaccination process – that is, everything leading up to the vaccinations themselves – is out of the state’s control.

“Most of the vaccine distribution process is controlled by the federal government and unfortunately, that means there are a lot of unknowns,” Wolf said.

Those unknowns range from when vaccine shipments will be sent and how much vaccine they will include.

“The vaccine rollout obviously is a dynamic process,” said Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. “We are dependent on information from the federal government, and sometimes this information changes – definitely daily, and sometimes hourly.”

The latest iteration of the state’s plan adds a Phase “1C,” and moves the general public from Phase 3 to Phase 2. There is no longer a Phase 3.

Phase 2 covers the general public, defined as all individuals not previously covered who are 16 or older and do not have conditions that would keep them from getting the vaccine. Yet a slew of fields and sectors are included in the 1B and 1C phases.

Phase 1B targets people aged 75 and older, people living in or working in other congregate care facilities, USPS workers and first responders. It also includes essential frontline employees in the following sectors:

• Food and agriculture
• Manufacturing
• Grocery store workers
• Education
• Clergy and “essential support” for houses of worship
• Public transit
• Caregivers working in early childhood and adult day programs

More sectors are covered in Phase 1C, which includes people aged 65 to 74 and anyone else over the age of 16 with a high-risk condition. It covers essential workers in the following sectors:

• Transportation and logistics
• Water and wastewater
• Housing construction
• Food service
• Finance, including bank tellers
• Information technology
• Communications
• Energy
• Legal services
• Federal, state, county and local government, including elected officials, members of the judiciary and their staffs
• Media
• Public safety
• Public health