Feb 19, 2021 3 min read

Pennsylvania Department of Health COVID-19 press secretary Barry Ciccocioppo said Thursday that the agency is working with Moderna COVID-19 vaccine providers to help make sure people awaiting their second dose receive it on time.

Ciccocioppo said the DOH has been “holding calls and meetings to see if providers have the resources they need to do any rescheduling, if necessary,” and “engaging a lot more closely with providers and making sure communication with the providers is better.”

On Wednesday, the state’s Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine that were shipped to providers and intended as second doses were accidentally used as first doses.

About 30,000 to 60,000 second-dose appointments will need to be pushed back, Beam said, and another 30,000 to 55,000 initial doses likely will be delayed.

The second dose of the two-shot Moderna vaccine is typically administered 28 days apart, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its guidance to allow the second dose to be delayed up to 42 days past the initial dose.

The DOH said it could take about three weeks to get back on track, barring any setbacks.

“We’re not saying it was the pharmacies who made the mistake,” said Ciccocioppo. “We’re not blaming anybody. There’s a multitude of reasons this happened.”

The first and second doses of the Moderna vaccine are not packaged differently, and there is no difference between the first and second vaccine, Ciccocioppo said.

“And we’ve been saying for a month, ‘Don’t hold back on first and second doses; get them out,'” said Ciccocioppo. “The bottom line is there were second doses given out across the state as first doses. There’s blame on both side. The state could do a better job of communication and indicating which are second doses and which are first doses. We’re trying to get this problem fixed so we can make sure everyone gets their second dose and there’s minimum interruption to first doses.”

Pennsylvania has largely been well below national averages when it comes to the percent of the population that has received their first or second dose of the vaccine since distribution began in December.

But Ciccocioppo defended the state’s rollout, noting Pennsylvania has administered 1.9 million doses so far, which exceeds the number of doses administered by neighboring West Virginia, Ohio and New Jersey.

In recent weeks, there has been a growing call for a centralized vaccine sign-up, but Ciccocioppo said the primary problem is the scarcity of vaccine, not the state’s scheduling system.

“We’re always open to consider areas and resources that could help Pennsylvanians get vaccinated, but the problem is there’s not enough vaccine available,” said Ciccocioppo, noting about 4 million people are eligible and the state is receiving about 183,000 doses each week.

The DOH again declined to disclose how many and which vaccine providers were impacted.

Washington Health System, Monongahela Valley Hospital and Canonsburg Hospital said they were not affected by the error.