Casey applauds effort to 'meet people where they are' at Oakhurst Homes vaccine clinic
May 8—U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. promoted what he called "safe" and "essential" COVID-19 vaccines as "the only way we can put this pandemic behind us" during a visit to Johnstown on Friday.
More than 9 million shots have been administered in Pennsylvania. Almost 3.8 million commonwealth residents and 43,000 Cambria County citizens are fully vaccinated. As vaccines have increased, cases have decreased, going from a peak statewide seven-day average of 10,578 on Dec. 16 to 2,868 on Thursday.
Cambria County — which, for a period in December, had the highest per capita case count of any county in the United States with a population of 100,000 or more — recorded only 39 new cases from Thursday to Friday.
"We've got to make sure that people know about the importance of getting the vaccine," said Casey, a Democrat.
Casey made his comments during a vaccine clinic and community resource fair hosted by the Cambria-Somerset COVID-19 Task Force at the Johnstown Housing Authority's Oakhurst Homes.
"This vaccination site is an example of a group of folks in this community coming together to bring a vaccination site to a neighborhood, to a community," Casey said. "That's what we've got to continue to support, bringing vaccinations, bringing health care into communities and to meet people where they are. That's critically important."
The task force, 1889 Foundation-Jefferson Center for Population Health, Richland Family Health Center and JHA have held several popup vaccination events during recent weeks.
"We're making sure that we're bringing the vaccine to people so that they don't have to travel far and it's convenient for them," said Jeannine McMillan, executive director of the 1889 Foundation-Jefferson Center for Population Health's Community Care HUB.
The gathering also included nonprofits providing information about their organizations.
"We set something up, brought the shots to the people," JHA's acting Executive Director Michael Alberts said.
"We went a step further to try to increase attendance and made a community fair event out of it, trying to get more people involved.
"They can see that the community has come together, all these different organizations that wanted to be a part of it, wanted to be in the same place at the same time, to offer services to the residents and get shots in arms."
Casey, along with Dr. Denise Johnson, Pennsylvania's acting physician general, encouraged people who might be hesitant about getting vaccinated to seek out information from trained professionals and individuals close to them.
"We ask them to reach out to trusted sources of information," Johnson said. "We would ask them to reach out to their physicians. More than 90% of physicians have gotten vaccinated. We were the first in line, and so we strongly believe in it and encourage our patients as well.
"And then we ask you to speak to a family member, and for those of you who have been vaccinated, tell your friends and family about your experience and why you chose to get vaccinated. We think it's those individual conversations that can make a difference."
Johnson stressed the importance of getting vaccinations administered quickly.
"We really need to accelerate our pace of vaccinations because we are in a race against the variants," she said. "As long as there's still virus that's circulating, there's more opportunity for variants to emerge, and variants may emerge then that are not as sensitive to the treatments that we're using as well as the vaccines."
