The Bucks County Commissioners this week voted to add COVID-19 vaccination sites at Neshaminy Mall and St. Luke’s Quakertown Campus, increasing the number of county-funded vaccine clinics to five.
The additional sites, expected to open by March 16, will enhance the county’s ability to administer more doses as vaccine shipments begin to ramp up. For the past three weeks, the county has operated vaccination clinics at the Bristol, Newtown and Perkasie campuses of Bucks County Community College.
Vaccine shipments to Bucks County from the Pennsylvania Department of Health have increased this week.
“We anticipate them continuing to increase next week,” said Commissioners’ vice chair Bob Harvie. “We are moving as quickly as we can to put shots in arms. We’re confident that we will be able to get enough vaccines to be able to start using those sites to their full capacity.”
The sites will operate from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. They are expected to enable vaccination of up to 500 people per site each day, depending on vaccine supply.
At their regular meeting this week in Doylestown, the commissioners approved memoranda of understanding with the former H&M store at the mall in Bensalem Township, and St. Luke’s Network and Brookfield Properties of Chicago for the use of the hospital site in Quakertown.
Neither organization is charging the county for use of its facilities as vaccination clinics, which are expected to conclude by July.
“We are grateful to both of these entities for allowing us to use their facilities,” said Margaret McKevitt, Bucks County’s chief operating officer.
This week, the county has double the capacity of its three community college sites, seeking to vaccinate up to 400 people per day at each location. That would be about double the rate of last week, when vaccine was less plentiful.
Through the end of last week, Bucks County providers had received 108,690 doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. Less than one-fifth of those doses have gone to the Bucks County Health Department for use at its clinics, where healthcare workers, senior citizens, people with qualifying health conditions and others eligible for Phase 1A vaccinations have been served.
A total of 11,028 doses of vaccine were administered countywide last week, including 2,975 at the county-financed clinics. As of late Wednesday, the community college clinics had administered more than 10,000 doses since opening on Feb. 16.
The county is operating its clinics through a contract with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, which is staffing the sites and administering the vaccinations. The Neshaminy Mall and St. Luke’s sites will be administering first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, while the community college sites will begin focusing on second doses in the coming weeks.
The county is currently scheduling vaccination appointments for those who pre-registered on or before Jan. 17. More than 150,000 people pre-registered in the 1A category for vaccinations. Click here to pre-register.
