PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Montgomery County Office of Public Health has received 2,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
"Finally, after 42 weeks, we can now go on the offense against this virus instead of only playing defense," said County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh.
Arkoosh said the county is working on a plan to administer the vaccine.
"These first doses will be used early next week to vaccinate paramedics and EMTs, our public health nurses who will be administering vaccine and other critical front-line workforce," she said.
Arkoosh said the 2,000 doses are in addition to what hospitals in the county have received.
She expects this will be the first of a regularly scheduled shipment of vaccines to come each week, but there is no confirmation.
Arkoosh also emphasized that even though the vaccine is slowly rolling out, people need to be safe over the holidays and avoid gatherings.
"But we are leveling off at a very high number of cases, on average about 360 to 370 cases a day. And it was just six, seven weeks ago we had an average of 30, 35 cases per day," she said.
She said the county has also seen a dip in hospitalizations and in the positivity rate, a trend she hopes continues if people listen to the experts and avoid gatherings over the next couple weeks.
