PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Overall, Philadelphia health officials are pleased with the way things have been going at the FEMA mass vaccination site at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which opened last week.
"That operation is running extremely well and it's hitting its targets for the number of vaccinations delivered," said Health Commissioner Dr. Tom Farley Tuesday during the city's coronavirus briefing.
The site is vaccinating roughly 6,000 people a day. It's been operating full time for the past five days, meaning 30,000 Philadelphians, more or less, have been immunized there so far.
Almost 25% of the 300,000 people on the city's waitlist have been vaccinated, thanks in large part to the FEMA site.
But there's one issue that's been a problem from the start that is still causing headaches.
"The email invitations are being shared," said Farley, "and people end up being scheduled and coming in to be vaccinated who are not invited."
The city is working with a software company to fix this problem. It will start sending out invitations that cannot be forwarded to others.
"The new system is that there will be just a direct email to someone and that email somehow gets them into the scheduling software," added Farley.
He admitted this new system is rolling out slower than he'd like. As of Tuesday afternoon, it's still not up and running, though Farley hopes that won't be the case soon.
On top of invite-sharers, Farley is aware people are lying to get on the waitlist before they are eligible.
"There's no way for us to really verify if someone says 'I've got diabetes,' whether they have it or not," he said. "We're asking people to be honest because we also want to move quickly, so if we try to put in systems that would require people to prove it, it would slow things down."
The city also announced five new community vaccination sites at locations all over Philadelphia. They will start to open in the coming weeks.
Locations currently open:
• Community Academy Charter School, 1100 E. Erie Ave.
• Center City Vaccination Center at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 N. 12th St.
• MLK Older Adult Center, 2101 Cecil B. Moore Ave.
• University of the Sciences, Bobby Morgan Arena, 835 S. 43rd St.
Locations opening the week of March 15:
• Edward O'Malley Athletic Association, 144 Moore St.
• Grand Yesha Ballroom, 2308 Snyder Ave.
• Mastery Charter Simon Gratz High School, 1798 W. Hunting Park Ave.
Locations opening the week of March 22:
• Cannstatter Volksfest-Verein German American Club, 9130 Academy Road
• City Facility, 7800 Ogontz Ave.
To date, there have been 115,997 total confirmed COVID-19 cases in Philadelphia and 3,169 total deaths.
