Major Lehigh Valley hospital network setting up mass COVID vaccine site at Dorney Park

The network continues to vaccinate health care workers against COVID-19 as quickly and safely as possible as the vaccine arrives to ensure they are able to care for patients and the public, Downs said.

05/18/2021

Lehigh Valley Health Network is preparing to launch a mass COVID-19 vaccination site at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in South Whitehall Township.

Tana Korpics, spokeswoman for Dorney Park, confirmed work began this week on preparing the operation, with tents going up in the amusement park’s parking lots. A timeframe for when the vaccinations would begin has not been set, she said.

The operation is expected to mirror the health network’s free, drive-through flu vaccination clinic performed each fall. The flu shots have been implemented for the past 23 years, free to the public, regardless of where people live or whether they have medical insurance, said Lehigh Valley Health Network spokesman Brian Downs.

In November, the Lehigh Valley Health Network provided nearly 8,000 flu vaccinations over a two-day span at both Dorney Park and Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Korpics said.

The network continues to vaccinate health care workers against COVID-19 as quickly and safely as possible as the vaccine arrives to ensure they are able to care for patients and the public, Downs said.

“We are ready to take our tested plan live for the COVID-19 vaccine so that we can continue our leadership role and vaccinate all that want it in a quick and safe setting,” he added.

While an appointment hasn’t been required to receive the flu vaccine, patients interested in receiving the COVID-19 vaccination will need to set up a time, Downs said. Appointments will be scheduled via LVHN’s online portal at mylvhn.org. Downs said those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine don’t have to be an LVHN patient to create an account, which will offer “the fastest, easiest way to be notified when appointments will be available.”

By mid-December, both the Lehigh Valley Health Network and St. Luke’s University Health Network received the first shipments of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech on their campuses. Around the same time of that shipment, a government advisory panel endorsed a second COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for the Moderna shot to be added to the U.S. vaccination campaign.

However, because the initial supplies are limited, federal and state plans call for a tiered approach giving priority to health care workers who deal with COVID-19 patients directly, placing that group in Phase 1A. As more is manufactured, vaccine access will expand to other medical workers, people in critical occupations, senior citizens and people with high-risk health conditions.

Eventually, when those critical demands have been met, vaccinations will available up to the general public. The vaccinations currently are free under a federal program, and both the Lehigh Valley Health Network and St. Luke’s University Health Network said they’ll cover the costs to administer the vaccinations, as well.

St. Luke’s additionally is offering the vaccine at its 11 hospital campuses throughout the greater Lehigh Valley, spokesman Samuel Kennedy told lehighvalleylive.com Wednesday. Patients there can complete a brief questionnaire in their St. Luke’s MyChart account to be notified to schedule vaccines when it’s time. Guests can sign up for an account at sluhn.org.

Both Lehigh Valley and St. Luke’s have also begun to offer vaccines to first responders that are covered under the next phase of Pennsylvania’s vaccine protocol, Phase 1B.

“We continue to vaccinate people in (Phase 1A) as we have been directed to do by the state,” Kennedy said.

LVHN already has administered COVID-19 vaccinations at its main Cedar Crest campus in Salisbury Township, as well as some of its other facilities. Those operations appear to be much smaller that what is being planned at Dorney Park.

Pennsylvania on Tuesday became the seventh state in the nation to surpass 18,000 COVID-19 deaths as a winter case surge causes a record pace of lives lost. The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 7,275 additional coronavirus cases and 227 more deaths in its daily briefing. The total case count now stands at 733,429 with a death toll of 18,080 Pennsylvanians.

President Donald Trump’s administration meanwhile is asking states to speed delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to people 65 and older and to others at high risk by no longer holding back the second dose of the two-dose shots, officials said Tuesday. Those two groups currently fall under Phase 1C in Pennsylvania’s vaccination plan.

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine has promised the pace of vaccination should pick up across the state.

To date, at least 311,477 vaccines have been administered across Pennsylvania. That figure does not include shots CVS has administered in long-term care facilities as part of a federal partnership.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires a second shot about three weeks after the first vaccination, while Moderna requires a second shot about four weeks afterward. One-shot vaccines are still undergoing testing.

Credit: Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Updated Jan 13, 2021; Posted Jan 13, 2021 leghighvalley.com