How one small Pennsylvania pharmacy is vaccinating thousands

Hannah Beier and Maria Caspani - Behind the counter of 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 e-mails to sort through and phone calls to field, supplies to organise, appointments to schedule. Amin, known as Dr Mak, set up a vaccination clinic on Super Bowl on Sunday at the local firehouse that drew more than 1,000 people who kept their appointments for shots despite the snow that day. “It was just like a party out there,” Amin, 36, recalled during an interview in late February. “It was something you could have never imagined in your life, to see four strangers carrying somebody on a wheelchair to get them through the mud and into the building.” Thanks to deep ties with their communities and the trust they have been able to establish over the years, some local pharmacists are instrumental in reaching people who might be reluctant to get vaccinated or may not know about vaccination efforts, said Jennifer Kates, the director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser Family Foundation. “Those local pharmacies are a really important trusted voice,” Kates said. The vaccine rollout, which the administration of former president Donald Trump left to the states to carry out without a federal blueprint or sufficient funding, has proven to be choppy. Under President Joe Biden supply has increased but some distribution and access hurdles persist. Montgomery County, where Schwenksville is located, has one of the highest per capita vaccination rates in the state, according to the state health department website. Pennsylvania ranks 28 out of 50 states with 18 per cent of residents getting at least one shot, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. On a gray Saturday morning in late February, Amin slipped into a Superman costume, the remnant of Halloweens past that he now sometimes wears for vaccinations, and drove through the frozen suburbs to deliver two Covid-19 vaccines to home-bound patients. “What a surprise!” 74-year-old on Gail Bertsch said after Amin and a few volunteers, whom she had not been expecting, knocked on her door. She and her husband James, who suffers from dementia, both got injections. “I can’t believe we can actually have this done,” she said. Amin has also vaccinated people by appointment at his pharmacy, including holding a special clinic for pregnant women and another one for children with underlying health conditions. — Reuters