All adults in Pa. will be eligible for covid vaccine Tuesday, 1 week early

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Apr. 12—Covid-19 vaccine appointments will be available to all Pennsylvanians beginning Tuesday, nearly a week ahead of schedule, Gov. Tom Wolf said Monday.

"We need to maintain acceleration of the vaccine rollout, especially as case counts and hospitalization rates have increased," Wolf said in a statement. "Therefore, just as President Biden has brought forward universal adult access to vaccines from May 1 to April 19, we are moving Pennsylvania's timeline of universal adult access to April 13."

The move is meant to create more demand for the vaccine as the state's supply continues to increase.

Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said her department has been fielding calls from vaccine providers who are concerned about filling appointments. An order remains in place dictating that providers must use at least 80% of the vaccines they are allocated within seven days of receiving them.

"Throughout this entire rollout, we've stuck to the principle of 'no wasted dose,'" she said, noting that providers' difficulty filling appointments wasn't concentrated in one area, but rather statewide.

Not only will providers now have an easier time scheduling vaccination appointments, it also creates for them "simpler, streamlined operations for vaccine providers," as they won't have to check the eligibility status of those making appointments.

After months of working through vaccinations for those in Phase 1A — anyone 65 or older, health care workers and those 16 to 64 with certain health conditions — the Wolf administration has moved quickly to expand eligibility.

Monday marked the start of Phase 1C, which includes essential workers in a slew of sectors, from transportation and housing construction to government and communications.

The final phase, Phase 2, opens eligibility to anyone 16 and older not covered in Phase 1. At this time, only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved for those ages 16 and 17.

Beam said she's confident that opening eligibility will not come with the difficulties and frustrations the initial Phase 1A rollout did, such as scarcity of appointments, crashing websites and waiting lists that numbered in the thousands.

"We are in a different place than we were in January," she said. "Not only has supply increased, we also have given providers the ability to schedule. They did not have the predictability or the certainty that they required to be able to schedule an appointment even a week out, let alone a month out."

She said it's important to realize that becoming eligible means "being able to get an appointment scheduled.

"It doesn't mean a shot in the arm today," she said.

What it does mean, Beam said, is earlier access for groups like college students, who now might have a better chance of completing the two-dose course before they leave campus for the summer.

College and university campuses have become a focal point in recent weeks as cases in some areas have begun to spike. As of Friday, the most recent day for which data were available, there were 105 University of Pittsburgh students in isolation with the virus.

Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@triblive.com or via Twitter .