The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) announced that pursuant to Act 73 of 2021, the suspensions of various regulatory provisions under the state disaster emergency declaration were extended until March 31, 2022, unless reinstated sooner by DHS. Effective December 6, 2021, DHS has reinstated several suspended regulations, in whole or in part. A list of suspended regulations and their status is available here: https://www.dhs.pa.gov/coronavirus/Pages/Suspended-Regulations-Reinstatement.aspx

The Pennsylvania Department of Health will now provide weekly summaries of COVID-19 cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccine data, in addition to their daily updates of the interactive dashboards on the website to provide a clearer picture of what is happening than daily snapshots alone provide. The data reveals:

• Between November 29 and December 5, almost 422,000 vaccine doses were administered across the commonwealth; nearly half were boosters and about 76,000 were to children ages 5-11.
• According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health weekly report, this is a 47.2% increase in vaccines administered from the previous week.
• As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 4,298 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state.
• In the past seven days, the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 increased by 9%, the state averaged 7,338 new cases per day and a total of 654 deaths were reported.
• To date, there have been almost 1.8 million cases of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania and 34,107 virus-related deaths.

Note: the state’s vaccine data includes information from all counties except Philadelphia, which operates as a separate vaccine jurisdiction.

A data correction made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week made a dent in the state’s perceived progress on vaccinating the adult population. Under a data adjustment disclosed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), the number of people considered fully vaccinated dropped from 73.7% of those 180and-older to 68.9% because of a reduction of about 1.2 million doses after removal of duplicate information and correction of data on first, second and booster doses.

On November 19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) strengthened its guidance to recommend a booster shot https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/clinical-considerations/covid-19-vaccines-us.html#considerations-covid19-vax-booster of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines for all adults ages 18 years or older who completed their primary vaccination more than six months ago. See the CDC statement https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1119-booster-shots.html This recommendation aligns with and follows the Federal Drug Administration’s authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines as a booster and supplements previous guidance on boosters for other COVID-19 vaccines, covered in this bulletin https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USHHSHRSA/bulletins/2f91b54  The following resources are available to help health centers understand what this means: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/booster-shot.html and https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/clinical-considerations/covid-19-vaccines-us.html

The Biden Administration announced that they will be making 50 Million COVID-19 at-home testing kits available – free of charge – for distribution by Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers to the communities they serve.

In September, President Biden announced that his administration was going to make 25 Million at-home COVID testing kits available free-of-charge to individuals receiving care at Federally Qualified Health Centers. National Association of Rural Health Clinic (NARHC) Executive Director Bill Finerfrock wrote a letter to President Biden on September 24 expressing disappointment that a similar effort was not being undertaken for patients living in rural underserved communities served by RHCs.

In the letter, Finerfrock said,

“While this is welcome news for the millions of low-income uninsured individuals who receive care from Community Health Centers, it ignores the millions of individuals who reside in rural, underserved communities who receive care from Federally Certified Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) or Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs).

We commend our CHC colleagues for the work they are doing to help meet the COVID testing needs of underserved individuals residing in urban areas, but it is Rural Health Clinics and Critical Access Hospitals that are meeting those needs in underserved rural America.

NARHC looks forward to working with your Administration to ensure that individuals living in rural underserved areas have access to free in-home COVID testing kits through their federally certified Rural Health Clinic.”

NARHC would like to thank the Biden Administration for recognizing that RHCs are an important part of our nation’s health care safety net and that RHCs play a vital role at ensuring access to quality health care for individuals living in rural underserved areas.

NARHC has been in touch with Administration officials about the distribution of these kits and how best to get these at-home testing kits into the hands of individuals living in rural underserved areas. The details on the distribution plan are still being worked out and NARHC anticipates being involved in these deliberations. However, it may be several months before the Testing Kits become available for distribution. As we learn more about how and when RHCs can access these COVID testing kits, we will share that information with the RHC community as soon as possible.