Bucks Co. Plans 6 COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Plans are in place to open six COVID-19 vaccination clinics across Bucks County, officials say. The only problem? They don't have enough vaccine to do so.

Bucks County commissioners on Wednesday approved a $14 million contract with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to run the six sites through at least the beginning of April. The sites, officials say, will be able to vaccinate as many as 15,000 people per week.

"We would be vaccinating everybody right now," said commission Chairwoman Diane Ellis-Marseglia. "We are ready to go. We have the staff. We have AMI. The issue is we do not have the vaccine."

Through last week, the Bucks County Department of Health had received fewer than 6,000 doses of the vaccine — less than 10 percent of the doses that have been sent by the state to hospitals and other providers in Bucks. The state receives vaccines from the federal government.

Bucks County COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: Updates

Even as they rolled out plans for the vaccine clinics, county commissioners urged patience, saying they understand the public is anxious to be vaccinated.

"None of us like this because it sounds like we’re kicking the can down the lane or passing the buck, but we really don’t control any of this," said Bob Harvie, the commission's vice-chairman. "This is the worst pandemic in 100 years, and the largest vaccination program in human history. Period."

Audrey Kenny, Bucks County's interim director of emergency services, said her staff has worked with the health department to secure the six vaccination clinic sites. She said the locations will be identified when their opening dates get clearer.

Three of them, the county confirmed, will be the Bucks County Community College campuses in Bristol, Newtown and Perkasie where the county has been running COVID testing sites.

Each site should be able to vaccinate 500 people per day once an ample vaccine supply is available, Kenny said.

In addition to those six sites, the county plans to have two mobile vaccination teams that will be able to give up to 150 shots per day. Officials say they expect to start getting bigger shipments of vaccine from the state soon.

"We are just waiting on the state and the state is waiting on the federal government,” said Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo. "As soon as that happens, whether that’s this week, next week, two weeks from now, we’re ready to go. And we’re going to move as quickly as possible."

As officials work on the vaccine rollout, the number of new coronavirus infections in Bucks County continued to drop last week. On Tuesday, 176 new infections were reported, giving the county a seven-day average of 285 per day.

New infection numbers in Bucks had steadily declined for a few weeks before a spike last week that officials blamed on a glitch in data reporting that caused many old cases to show up for the first time.

There have now been 40,698 cases of COVID-19 in Bucks County since the pandemic began. Four more deaths from the virus also were reported on Tuesday, bringing the county's total to 1,042.

Hospitalizations also are down in Bucks, with the county reporting 111 coronavirus patients hospitalized, with just 28 of them in intensive care and 13 of them on ventilators.

Residents may register online at Bucks County's COVID-19 Vaccine Information portal to receive a vaccination from the county. So far, nearly 200,000 people have registered.

COVID and vaccine questions should be directed to the county’s COVID-19 helpline at 1-800-383-0371.

The Bucks County Department of Health has been giving the vaccine it has received to healthcare workers at an appointment-only clinic in Langhorne. So far, a total of 27,937 people in Bucks County have gotten partial vaccinations — the sixth-highest county total in Pennsylvania — and another 8,966 have gotten both of the two-dose vaccine shots, the fifth-most in the state.

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