SCHWENKSVILLE, Pa. (Reuters) – By Hannah Beier and Maria Caspani
Behind the Skippack Pharmacy counter in Schwenksville, near Philadelphia, owner Mayank Amin has been working late into the night since his independent drugstore received state approval in late January to administer COVID-19 vaccines.
There are thousands of emails to search and phone calls to the field, supplies to organize, appointments to schedule.
Amin, known as Dr. Mak, set up a vaccination clinic at the local firehouse on Super Bowl Sunday that attracted more than 1,000 people who kept their shooting appointments that day despite the snow.
“It was like a party out there,” recalls Amin, 36, during an interview with Reuters in late February. “It was something you could never have imagined in your life, seeing four strangers carrying someone in a wheelchair to get them into the building through the mud.”
Thanks to the close links with their communities and the trust they have been able to build over the years, some local pharmacists play an important role in reaching out to people who may be reluctant to get vaccinated or who may be unaware of vaccination efforts, said Jennifer Kates, the director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Those local pharmacies are a very important, trusted voice,” said Kates.
The vaccine rollout, which former President Donald Trump’s administration has left for states to implement without a federal blueprint or adequate funding, has proven choppy. Supply has increased under President Joe Biden, but some distribution and access barriers remain.
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 is ranked 28th out of 50 states, with 18% of residents getting at least one chance, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. (tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR)
SURPRISE SHOT
On a gray Saturday morning in late February, Amin donned a Superman costume, the relic of Halloween’s past that he now sometimes wears for vaccinations, and drove across the frozen suburbs to deliver two COVID-19 vaccines to homebound patients.
“What a surprise!” 74-year-old Gail Bertsch said after Amin and a few volunteers, whom she had not expected, knocked on her door. She and her husband James, who has dementia, both received injections.
“I can’t believe we can actually get this done,” she said.
Amin has also vaccinated people by appointment at his pharmacy, including a special clinic for pregnant women and a clinic for children with underlying health conditions.
Among them was the pharmacist’s cousin, who suffers from neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumors to form in the brain, nerves and other parts of the body.
About 3,000 people have received initial shots from both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech through Skippack Pharmacy since early February, Amin said. Of the approximately 1,000 residents who received a second dose over the weekend were Chester and Martha Pish, aged 97 and 98, respectively, who have been married for 78 years.
The effort was comprehensive for Amin and riddled with hurdles, including organizing vaccine supplies – which sometimes arrive a few hours in advance, a side effect of the supply chain hiccups that have been one of the issues that have plagued the rollout.
The young pharmacist reunites with his pregnant wife alone on weekends as a health precaution and spends the week at his parents’ home in Lansdale. The couple will welcome their first child in May.
“I want to be there when my child is born, and I want to make sure all my people are vaccinated by then,” he told Reuters. “If I can, that would be my dream.”
GETTING TOGETHER
Pandemic hardships and now the drive to get people into their arms have united his community in Montgomery County behind the young pharmacist.
On a recent Friday, five volunteers gathered at the back of the store. They filled spreadsheets with patient contact information and checked the inventory of vaccine supplies.
Amin has only one other 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 book a COVID-19 vaccine appointment.
“It’s just incredible how everyone is filtered into this one space,” said event planner Courtney Marengo, one of Amin’s volunteers.
Amin said he had no intention of having a pharmacy. But he moved to fill a void when Skippack, a 50-year-old local institution, was bought by national giant CVS in 2018. The chain took over Skippack Pharmacy’s assets, but left the hatch behind. Amin bought the pharmacy from CVS before the pandemic in hopes of keeping the drug in the community.
“I feel like at certain times in your life things fall into your lap,” he said. “You may not have planned it to happen, but things are happening for the right reason.”
Reporting by Maria Caspani and Hannah Beier in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania; written by Maria Caspani; edited by Donna Bryson and Lisa Shumaker