How a small Pennsylvania pharmacy is vaccinating thousands

SCHWENKSVILLE, Pa. (Reuters) – By Hannah Beier and Maria Caspani

Behind the counter at Skippack Pharmacy in Schwenksville, near Philadelphia, owner Mayank Amin has been working late into the night since his independent drugstore received state approval to administer COVID-19 vaccines in late January.

There are thousands of emails to sort and calls to the field, supplies to organize, appointments to schedule.

Amin, known as Dr. Mak, set up a vaccination clinic on Sunday at the Super Bowl at the local fire department that attracted more than 1,000 people who kept their vaccination commitments despite the snow that day.

“It was like a party outside,” recalled Amin, 36, during an interview with Reuters in late February. “It was something you could never have imagined in your life, to see four strangers carrying someone in a wheelchair to take them through the mud and into the building.”

Thanks to deep ties to their communities and the trust they have built up over the years, some local pharmacists are instrumental in reaching people who may be reluctant to get vaccinated or not know about vaccination efforts, said Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“These local pharmacies are a really important voice of confidence,” said Kates.

The launch of the vaccine, which former President Donald Trump’s administration left for states to carry out without a federal project or sufficient funding, proved to be unstable. Under President Joe Biden, supply has increased, but some distribution and access obstacles persist.

Montgomery County, where Schwenksville is located, has one of the highest vaccination rates per capita in the state, according to the state health department website. Pennsylvania ranks 28th out of 50 states, with 18% of residents receiving at least one injection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR)

SURPRISE SHOT

On a gray Saturday morning in late February, Amin dressed in a Superman costume, the rest of the Halloweens past he sometimes uses to get vaccinated, and drove through the frozen suburbs to deliver two COVID-19 vaccines to patients going to House.

“What a surprise!” 74-year-old at Gail Bertsch later said that Amin and some volunteers, whom she did not expect, knocked on her door. She and her husband, James, who suffers from dementia, received injections.

“I can’t believe that we can really do that,” she said.

Amin also vaccinated people on consultation at his pharmacy, including a special clinic for pregnant women and another for children with underlying health problems.

Among them was the pharmacist’s nephew, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, a disease that causes the formation of tumors in the brain, nerves and other parts of the body.

About 3,000 people have received their first doses of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech through Skippack Pharmacy since the beginning of February, said Amin. Among about 1,000 residents who received their second dose over the weekend, were Chester and Martha Pish, 97 and 98, respectively, who have been married for 78 years.

The effort has been exhausting for Amin and fraught with obstacles, including organizing vaccine stocks – which sometimes arrive just a few hours in advance, a side effect of supply chain hiccups that are among the problems that have affected deployment.

The young pharmacist meets his pregnant wife only on weekends as a health precaution and spends the week at his parents’ home in Lansdale. The couple will receive their first child in May.

“I want to be there when my son is born and I want to make sure that all my people are vaccinated by then,” he told Reuters. “If I could, this would be my dream.”

COME TOGETHER

Pandemic difficulties and now the desire to have injections in people’s arms brought together his Montgomery County community behind the young pharmacist.

On a recent Friday, five volunteers converged in the back of the store. They filled out spreadsheets with patient contact information and checked the stock of vaccination supplies.

Amin has just one more full-time employee, Jacquelyn Ziegler, and two pharmacy interns, Erica Mabry and Isabelle Lawler. But he can count on dozens of volunteers, including family members, to answer the phone and help less tech-savvy patients navigate the online system to schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment.

“It’s just amazing how everyone kind of filtered into this one space,” said event planner Courtney Marengo, one of Amin’s volunteers.

Amin said he did not intend to own a pharmacy. But he moved to fill a gap left when Skippack, a 50-year-old local institution, was bought by the national giant CVS in 2018. The chain acquired Skippack Pharmacy’s assets, but left it closed. Amin bought the CVS pharmacy before the pandemic in hopes of keeping the resource in the community.

“I feel that sometimes things fall into your lap at certain times in your life,” he said. “You may not have planned for this to happen, but things happen for the right reason.”