Philly opens first new vaccination clinic; N.J. relaxes restaurant, bar restrictions

Philadelphia opened its first city-run mass vaccination clinic at the Convention Center on Wednesday, as New Jersey relaxed some restrictions on restaurants and bars, providers around the region rescheduled shots delayed by the snowstorm, and public officials asked for continued patience as people seek still-scarce appointments.

Montgomery County, for instance, received 3,500 fewer first doses this week than last, leaving the county clinic with only enough supply for appointments scheduled through Monday, said Commissioner Val Arkoosh. That kind of unpredictability, along with the general short supply of vaccine, is what keeps providers from being able to schedule appointments as quickly as many in the public would like.

“We do have the infrastructure in place to administer a lot of vaccine each day,” Arkoosh said. “We just need more vaccine.”

New Jersey residents are still hitting long delays when trying to schedule appointments using the state call center or website.

“We know that appointments remain hard to come by,” Gov. Phil Murphy said. “Please understand that this is because we just don’t have the supply we need to satisfy demand. As our supply increases, we will be able to open more and more appointments.”

The federal supply is slowly growing, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey are both receiving more doses as a result. The United States administered an average of more than 1.3 million shots a day over the last week,. compared with about 1.1 million the previous week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday. That means the country is on track to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of administering 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office.

In New Jersey, health officials are working with local leaders to turn places of worship and community centers into vaccination sites, aiming to improve access in communities of color.

In Philadelphia, the effort centered Wednesday on the Convention Center, where residents went to get vaccines at the first of several sites the city has vowed to open this month after the closure of the troubled Philly Fighting COVID site.

The city plans to open three first-dose clinics and three-second dose clinics by the end of the month, health department spokesperson James Garrow said. One clinic will be open each day, Garrow said, vaccinating about 500 people per day. The city has not yet determined the locations for the other clinics, which will be in different areas of the city.

“Philly Fighting COVID was a mistake,” Mayor Jim Kenney said at the Convention Center opening. “We’re moving on.”

The clinic, which has 20 vaccination stations and 80 workers, will be used this week and next to vaccinate people who already received a first dose. The city has reached out to everyone who got a first shot from Philly Fighting COVID for whom contact information was available, said city spokesperson Lauren Cox.

Anyone in that situation who has not been contacted by the city should call 215-685-5488.

The city has paid $65,000 to the Convention Center to rent the space for all of February and run a series of nine clinics, Cox said. The health department is discussing renting the space to the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium and hospitals for them to run clinics on days when the city’s is not operating.

Asked Wednesday about some lawmakers’ calls for his resignation over the city’s partnership with Philly Fighting COVID — with which the city severed ties due to questions about its patient privacy policy and for-profit status — Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said he understood people’s concerns but did not plan to resign.

“I have something still to contribute,” Farley said. “We have an epidemic to fight, a lot of people to vaccinate.”

Kenney backed his health commissioner, saying Farley is “doing a great job” and his department “a terrific job at keeping this pandemic at bay.”

Deputy Health Commissioner Caroline Johnson resigned last week over her role in the contracting process.

» READ MORE: Next up in the Philly Fighting COVID debacle: A political fight in City Hall

Asked what he knew of Philly Fighting COVID before touting the grand opening of its mass vaccination site at the Convention Center last month, Kenney said he “[doesn’t] get involved in any contracts in the city.” He also suggested that members of City Council who have blamed him for the controversy are doing so unfairly because they did not question the group during a November hearing.

“City Council had an opportunity,” Kenney said. “So questions weren’t asked that should have been asked, and we’re moving forward.”

Council has proposed legislation to provide more oversight in the vaccine rollout and is preparing to question administration officials at a Friday hearing.

Joe Grace, spokesperson for Council President Darrell L. Clarke, pushed back on Kenney’s characterization Wednesday, saying the November hearing was focused on examining the city’s overall COVID-19 preparedness.

“The administration has the authority to issue a contract and that’s the administration’s job,” Grace said. “Our job is to provide oversight.”

In New Jersey,

restaurants, gyms, salons, performance venues, and other indoor businesses will be allowed starting Friday to increase their customer capacity to 35%, Murphy said. The same goes for other indoor gatherings, with a cap of 150 people.

The 10 p.m. curfew for indoor dining at bars and restaurants will also be lifted Friday. Sitting at bars remains prohibited.

“I’m proud that we’ve been able to protect our restaurants from the roller coaster of openings and closings that other states have had to implement,” Murphy said. “Because we opened indoor dining responsibly, not once have we had to reduce capacity. And now, because of your compliance, we can further expand indoor dining.”

Montgomery County next week will launch a vaccine information hotline, which residents will soon also be able to use to preregister for appointments.

The county has also added a preregistration tracker to its website, allowing residents who have preregistered through the county’s form to get a sense of where they stand in line. Nearly 140,000 people have used the form, and it could be up to 12 weeks before someone who has preregistered may hear back from the county about scheduling an appointment, Arkoosh said.

Some people are jumping the line by using other people’s scheduling links, Arkoosh said. She asked that anyone who receives an email from the county allowing them to schedule an appointment not share the link.

“This is not ethical or moral, and it needs to stop,” Arkoosh said. “It’s extremely frustrating to folks that are eligible and have been following all the rules … to see others grab a link off of Facebook and make an appointment for themselves.”

Anyone who is not eligible for the vaccine will be turned away if they show up for an appointment. The county cannot stop the links from being reused because the flaw is inherent to the software program the state is having counties use, Arkoosh said.

The county’s case numbers and positivity rate continue to drop, Arkoosh said, coming down from holiday surges, though still much higher than before Halloween.

“We remain in a serious and continually evolving situation,” she said. “While we wait hopefully patiently for enough vaccine to arrive in our community to vaccinate everyone who would like to be vaccinated, we must continue to do the things we know work — which are wearing a mask, washing our hands, and watching our distance.”

Staff writers Laura McCrystal, Erin McCarthy, and Rob Tornoe contributed to this article.