Pennsylvania double counted 500,000 vaccine doses
(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania’s number of vaccinated residents shrank by more than 500,000 last week after the state revealed it counted some doses twice.
The discovery came Friday when the Department of Health said more than 11.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered, down from 11.8 million the day before. The figure reflects vaccination rates in 66 of the state’s 67 counties. Philadelphia receives its own allocation of immunizations from the federal government.
Maggi Barton, a department spokesperson, said that staff has been working to connect first and second doses with residents, so duplicated data was removed from its system. Health care facilities sometimes used different software that resulted in unidentified doses that had to be rectified, as well as instances when residents received first and second doses from different providers.
“The problem was identified in the spring, however, the demands of the vaccine roll out and the intense demand for immediate, real-time reporting of COVID-19 vaccination information, presented some challenges and did not provide adequate time to review and clean vaccination data until now,” she said in an email to The Center Square on Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, 61.3% of all residents 18 and older are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 the department said. More than 1.2 million have tested positive for the virus and 27,000 have died since the first cases were identified in March 2020.
“We have now updated the Pennsylvania vaccine dashboard to better reflect the reality that more Pennsylvanians are stepping up to get fully vaccinated,” Barton said. “In fact, more than 60,000 additional Pennsylvanians are fully vaccinated, and it more accurately reflects the number of people who have received the first of a two-dose vaccine.”
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