How PA Teachers Will Receive Vaccine: Details On Special Rollout

PENNSYLVANIA — Pennsylvania's efforts to vaccinate school employees using the new single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine are now underway. Pharmacies began vaccinating child care workers on Thursday, while clinics are prepared statewide for school employees.

Pharmacies across the state started receiving some 30,000 Johnson & Johnson doses directly from the federal government. The doses being allocated to pharmacies — Rite Aid, Topco, and Walmart — are specifically for child care workers, officials said. These pharmacies will reach out to child care workers directly to schedule appointments.

Separately, the state Department of Health will receive 94,600 doses of Johnson & Johnson.

There are about 200,000 school employees in Pennsylvania, the state estimates, though some number of them may have already received the vaccine if they qualified in 1A.

“After a year of unprecedented educational shifts and tensions, we are closer to relieving some constraints and increasing access to in-person learning," Acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega said Thursday.

How will the state get the vaccine to teachers?

The doses received by the Department of Health will be distributed to 28 intermediate units (regional educational agencies that coordinate educational needs) statewide. The sites will in turn send out surveys to school districts to determine how many school staff members still need the vaccine.

The Pennsylvania National Guard will run the security and logistics of these sites, while AMI Expeditionary will administer the vaccines.

There will be at least one clinic per intermediate unit, but some units covering larger geographical areas will organize more than just one site. Depending on need, some intermediate units will also organize mobile vaccine clinics to access more remote and rural school staff and teacher populations.

To begin with, these sites are expected to be able to vaccinate about 500 people per day, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield said. Other sites with larger staff and more resources might be able to vaccinate up to 1,000 per day.

"We want to make it as convenient as possible for them to get vaccinated," Padfield said.

RELATED: PA Will Vaccinate Teachers With Johnson & Johnson Vaccine

The units will provide school districts with available appointments, which can be booked via an online scheduling tool. Appointments will be available both on weekdays and weekends.

Who is being prioritized?

Teachers who work with those "most vulnerable to learning loss" by not being in-person will be prioritized, Padfield said.

Specifically, that means teachers of pre-K and elementary students, students with disabilities, English learners, and other at-risk students will go first. These teachers have "regular and sustained" in-person contact on an average day, Gov. Wolf explained Wednesday.

Teachers of older students, as well as other school staff like bus drivers, janitors, and food service workers, will be next. Because the state is dependent on a limited supply, it's not yet clear exactly when the next phase of vaccinating teachers of older students will begin.

What is the timeline?

These clinics are expected to open up between March 10 and March 13.

Officials are unsure exactly how long it might take to vaccinate all school employees, but they're hopeful most will be vaccinated by the end of March. The "very last" should be inoculated by mid-April, if all goes according to plan.

In addition to the initial shipment of 124,000 Johnson & Johnson doses, the state expects 4 million more by the end of this month.

What will the clinics look like?

Clinics will be staged into four key areas.

The initial entrance will be an ID verification area. This will be followed by a medical screening, before moving on to the vaccine itself.

Once the dose is administered, patients move into an observation area where they're monitored for a short time for any adverse side effects, which are extremely rare.

Will this impact how long I have to wait to get a vaccine?

According to the state, no.

In fact, officials believe that the way the teacher vaccine plan has been laid out will relieve pressure on the existing administration of doses. Because this plan is being administered independently of Pfizer and Moderna doses, it can be done without putting additional stress on vaccine providers.

"The folks in the 1A category have obviously had a lot of patience over these past few weeks," Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said, noting that allocations of Pfizer and Moderna to the rest of 1A will continue to increase. "This will not delay those efforts."

For more information on the COVID-19 vaccination in Pennsylvania, visit Patch's information hub.