4,000 Montco Vaccine Appointments Canceled After J&J Pause

NORRISTOWN, PA — Some 4,000 Montgomery County vaccine appointments were canceled or rescheduled this week due to the pause on administration of Johnson & Johnson doses. The pause came following a recommendation from the FDA and CDC over extremely rare side effects.

The county had been heavily reliant upon the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to accelerate its vaccine progress over the last two weeks. Last week, the county received a surprise double shipment of 21,000 J&J doses, allowing them to complete scheduling the 1A priority group and open up registrations to the general public.

"It (the pause) is going to slow down those efforts without question," Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh said Wednesday.

The county is continuing to operate five of its clinics — Blue Bell, Norristown, Willow Grove, Lansdale, and Pottstown — with Pfizer vaccine, but the future of vaccination progress remains murky. Other clinics relying on J&J have been closed.

J&J appointments that had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday were still kept, and transferred to Pfizer, as long as the individual was okay with receiving Pfizer.

The county has enough Pfizer to continue operating its five clinics through next Tuesday, but by then, "we'll start to come up a bit short," Arkoosh said. It's not yet clear if the county will receive an increase in Pfizer doses from the state, to compensate its currently usable J&J stock.

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In the meantime, the J&J doses remain safe in storage, and if the FDA and CDC determine in the next week that it is safe to use, clinics can ramp up again to the same capacity they were at on Monday.

New clinics were slated to open in the county on Friday, but those openings will now be delayed until at least next week. Two Saturday-only clinics will open up this week, however, in Pottstown and Spring House. To register for a vaccine in Montgomery County, see here.

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Sluggish vaccine progress in the county had seemed to sharply turn in recent days, as the expected weekly shipment of 10,500 J&J doses, coupled with 5,860 weekly Pfizer doses, was marked as a "game changer" by state officials. The increased shipments were met with great relief from the county, which had maintained for weeks that the state was shortchanging the southeastern part of the state in its allocations.

In addition to opening up new clinics, the county had used J&J specifically for highly vulnerable populations, like the homeless, disabled, elderly, and homebound. Administering the one dose vaccine was safer and easier for these populations.

As of Wednesday, 48.5 percent of the county's eligible population, 16 and over, has received at least one shot. About 82.6 percent of the county's senior population, 65 and over, has gotten at least their first dose.