Here's Where Montgomery County Stands On Vaccination Rate

NORRISTOWN, PA — In a very short time, vaccines have gone from scarce to abundant in Montgomery County and across Pennsylvania.

After months of hundreds of thousands of residents waiting in line, many of them among the area's most vulnerable, the county's fortunes changed almost overnight. The state announced at the end of March that huge weekly shipments of Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be shipped directly to the suburban Philadelphia counties, instead of concentrated in state-run, regional mass vaccine clinics.

The county swiftly completed it's 1A group vaccinations. Weeks later, despite the J&J pause, Montgomery County continued operating most of its clinics, using an existing stockpile of Pfizer vaccine.

Now that J&J has resumed, the county is able to get a vaccine to anyone who wants it, although vaccine hesitancy has been pointed to by officials as the next great hurdle that must be surmounted to end the pandemic.

As of Wednesday, the county has fully vaccinated 202,411 residents, and partially vaccinated 230,301.

That means that 32 percent of the county has been fully vaccinated, and 41 percent of the population 18 and over has been fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times study.

That second number, the percentage of adults in the county fully vaccinated, marks a 10 point increase over just a few weeks ago, when it stood at 31 percent on April 19.