The Road To Herd Immunity: Montco Plans For Vaccine Challenges

NORRISTOWN, PA — While there's no shortage of ominous news on the spread of coronavirus throughout Montgomery County and the surrounding region, officials continue to be optimistic on one front: a reliable vaccine is on its way.

The vaccine will be provided at no cost to all residents. While the details are still being ironed out — namely, exactly when the vaccine will arrive in the county, and how much will be available in the initial allocations — officials have been working for months to prepare the county's infrastructure for vaccine delivery.

"There is light at the end of this tunnel," Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said Wednesday. "In a few short months, there will be a safe vaccine available for our community."

>>Montco Hospitals Have Overloaded Emergency Rooms, Staff Shortages

The distribution process for the entire county faces numerous challenges. Pfizer's vaccine requires ultra-cold storage, which is not widely available. Other vaccines require multiple doses, further complicating delivery. Officials will have a "have a lot of work to do," Arkoosh noted, before the region reaches the end of the pandemic. She said that about 85 percent of the community needs to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.

The challenges go beyond availability and delivery. Authorities are well cognizant of the skepticism with which some in the community greet vaccines in general.

"I want to underscore the safety and the efficacy of these vaccines," Arkoosh said. "They seem to be very good at what they do." She noted that she'd be willing to take the vaccine publicly if there was belief that would ease public concern. Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton drew attention recently by making a similar offer.

The preliminary plan is for the county to utilize both drive up and walk up sites to deliver the vaccine. It's believed that the county will receive the initial batches of the vaccine to administer, along with hospitals.

At this time, it's not clear that private doctor's offices and other healthcare facilities will be doing early vaccine administration in Montgomery County. This is in part due to the complexity of the Pfizer vaccine's storage requirements, which requires ultra-cold freezers that are not widely available in the county.

While the ultimate timetable in Montgomery County is still unclear, things are expected to get underway in the coming weeks and months.

Arkoosh said the county plans to follow the Pennsylvania Department of Health's prioritization plan, broken down into three groupings of high-need populations.

The first delivery of vaccines will be specifically for healthcare workers in hospitals and long term care facilities.

The next group will be paramedics and EMS workers, as well other frontline workers that have been at risk since the start of the pandemic: teachers, grocery store workers, pharmacy employees, and other people who are part of society's critical infrastructure.

The third group is individuals over the age of 65, as well as individuals with underlying conditions that make them more susceptible to the virus.

Once these three groups are vaccinated, the vaccine will be available to the general public in the county.

"We'll just have to wait and see what comes after that, how much (of the vaccine is available), and when," Arkoosh said. "We don't know how long it will take to get everyone vaccinated.

As the county waits for its first batch of the vaccine, record numbers of cases and hospitalizations continue to be recorded each week. The county's percent positivity rate on tests is now up to 9.73, and there were 14 deaths reported Wednesday, the highest number of single-day COVID-19 fatalities since early June.

A recent New York Times study came up with a way to calculate where the average resident would fall in line in terms of vaccine priority. A 40-year-old Pennsylvanian with no health issues who is not an essential worker would be in line behind 268.7 million people across the United States, the study says.

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