executive order<\/a> that Pennsylvania would follow the medical guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, all of which recommend routine immunizations for all children, pregnant women and adults.<\/p>\nThis maneuver did not sit well with some federal officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocrat-led states that imposed unscientific school closures, toddler mask mandates and vaccine passports during the covid era are the ones who destroyed public trust in public health,\u201d Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement to TribLive. \u201cNow, the same governors who eroded that trust are trying to reinvent public health under the guise of \u2018coordination.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
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Shane Dunlap | TribLive <\/p>\n
Sarah Hoover, with AcoRx in Carnegie, demonstrates how a covid-19 vaccine is administered, during a vaccine clinic hosted by Hillcrest Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Pittsburgh\u2019s Middle Hill neighborhood on Oct. 17.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Who can get the vaccine?<\/p>\n
Allegheny County Health Department immunization clinics are following the recommendations from the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said Dr. Barbara Nightingale, deputy director for clinical services at the county health department.<\/p>\n
Allegheny Health Network is doing the same, said Dr. Amy Crawford-Faucher, chair of the Primary Care Institute. So are Independence Health System and Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia, Fiorina and Offit said.<\/p>\n
Nightingale, Crawford-Faucher, Offit and Fiorina all said it is too early in the respiratory-virus season to known if the number of people seeking covid vaccines will be consistent with previous years.<\/p>\n
UPMC did not make anyone available for an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cUPMC clinicians can help individual patients determine their eligibility based on their medical history,\u201d a spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A CVS spokesperson pointed reporters to a CVS Health statement from Oct. 7 that said, \u201cVaccines are now available to patients at all CVS Pharmacy and MinuteClinic locations nationwide. Prescriptions from outside prescribers are not required in any states.\u201d<\/p>\n
CVS did not respond to Ravi\u2019s contention that he was told over the summer he needed a prescription.<\/p>\n
Other large pharmacies in the Pittsburgh area are handling things differently.<\/p>\n
A Walgreens spokesperson said in a statement the company is offering vaccines to \u201celigible\u201d individuals age 3 and older without a prescription.<\/p>\n
A Giant Eagle Pharmacy spokesperson said in a statement that \u201caccording to CDC guidelines, anyone age 6 months and older is eligible to receive the covid vaccine with guidance from a health care professional, including pharmacists.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was unclear Friday what qualified people as eligible to get the covid vaccine from Walgreens and Giant Eagle.<\/p>\n
DeJames said there are numerous underlying conditions that could qualify someone for the booster.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you smoke? It\u2019s an underlying condition,\u201d DeJames said. \u201cSo when you think about all that, you know, no one\u2019s really being told they can\u2019t get a covid shot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmad Fahim Rasooli, 22, of Baldwin said he and his whole family first got the covid vaccine when they moved to the United States from Afghanistan in October 2024.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Rasooli, his mother and his siblings each filled out a yellow immunization sheet in Pittsburgh to get their second dose of the covid vaccine from the county health department.<\/p>\n
Rasooli said he had heard about the new federal guidelines but he and his family figured they would see what happened once they got to the vaccine clinic.<\/p>\n
After the Rasooli family waited about a half-hour, an Allegheny County nurse entered the lobby and called the family\u2019s name to come back for their shots.<\/p>\n
Is the covid vaccine covered?<\/p>\n
Allegheny County immunization clinics offer free vaccines for people who don\u2019t have insurance, Nightingale said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far, nobody has asked me to pay for it,\u201d Ravi said.<\/p>\n
Despite concern surrounding coverage for the vaccine, Offit said, the discourse has settled following Pennsylvania\u2019s alternative guidelines. Insurance companies have continued to pay for the vaccine.<\/p>\n
DeJames, who has administered somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 shots this year, said he has not seen the vaccine go uncovered by insurance once.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus far, we\u2019re not hearing about any problems with insurances,\u201d Nightingale said, echoing DeJames and Offit. \u201cSo generally here, we always have been able to give covid vaccines for people with insurance, and insurance covers it. And to our knowledge, that is still the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Megan Trotter is a TribLive staff writer. She can be reached at mtrotter@triblive.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After being told over the summer he needed a prescription to get the latest covid booster, A.R. Ravi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-238412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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