At 75 â an age cohort more likely to die from COVID-19 â Richard Gunning embarked on a futile pursuit in Lancaster County to get vaccinated that lead to a one-hour trek two counties away.
After calling St. Lukeâs University Hospital in Bethlehem on Jan. 15, Gunning and his wife two days later were rolling up their sleeves to receive the first of two COVID-19 vaccines.
Gunning has told at least half a dozen friends.
âEveryone that I know has been up there and has received a vaccine and are going back for their second,â the Manheim resident said, noting initially he thought being an out-of-county resident would preclude him from getting inoculated in Lehigh County.
WellSpan Health launched an online sign-up portal for COVID-19 vaccines on Jan. 19, the same day Pennsylvania expanded the first phase of its vaccine rollout plan. Within 48 hours the health system had scheduled 45,000 appointments and shut down the portal.
Barry Millhouse was able to schedule a February appointment for his 78-year-old mother at WellSpan York Hospital. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in the past year and is considered high-risk.
Before reaching out to WellSpan, Millhouse contacted his motherâs doctors at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, where she had been previously hospitalized.
Their response left Millhouse frustrated and upset.
He said they told him they werenât going to be administering the vaccine to the public right now and that he should keep watching the news to see when and where to get vaccinated.
But the couple will not be celebrating a belated Thanksgiving.
A fall in their Ephrata home last year sent Eshelmanâs wife to the Denver Borough facility to recover from ankle surgery. Diagnosed with COVID-19 five weeks after her transfer, Sue Eshelman died on Dec. 2.
She was 69.
âI promised her Iâd have Thanksgiving with her when she got out,â said Eshelman, 55. Sue had diabetes and kidney cancer, but she was sent to the nursing home to recover from her ankle surgery and was expected to recover and come home, Don said, asking, âHow do you go from falling down and breaking your ankle to passing away?â
COVID-19 vaccine providers in Lancaster County are facing unique challenges brought on by the pandemic as they race to inoculate the population.
Theyâve worked out how to coordinate vaccination clinics while keeping social distancing and other mitigation efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. In addition, the vaccine providers are dependent on a federally allocated number of doses and are required to follow state guidelines about who to vaccinate when.
Meanwhile, theyâre racing against time and daily increases in new COVID-19 cases and infection related deaths.
Nonetheless, Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health alone has been able to administer nearly 600 shots on some days.