|
There are thousands of emails to sort through and phone calls to
field, supplies to organize, appointments to schedule.
Amin, known as Dr. Mak, set up a vaccination clinic on Super
Bowl 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 with Reuters 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% of residents getting at least one
shot, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and
Prevention. (https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR)
SURPRISE SHOT
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.
Among them was the pharmacist's nephew, who suffers from
neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumors to form in the
brain, nerves, and other parts of the body.
Some 3,000 people have received first shots of both Moderna and
Pfizer-BioNTech through Skippack Pharmacy since early February,
Amin said. Among some 1,000 residents who received second doses
over the weekend were Chester and Martha Pish, 97 and 98 years
old respectively, who have been married 78 years.
The effort has been all-consuming for Amin, and riddled with
hurdles, including organizing vaccine stocks – which sometimes
arrive at a few hours' notice, a side effect of the supply chain
hiccups that are among the problems that have plagued the
rollout.
The young pharmacist reunites with his pregnant wife only 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 that all my people are vaccinated by then," he told
Reuters. "If I can, that would be my dream."
COME TOGETHER
Pandemic hardship and now the drive to get shots into people’s
arms have united his Montgomery County community behind the
young pharmacist.
On a recent Friday, five volunteers converged in the back of the
store. They filled spreadsheets with patients' contact
information and checked the inventory of vaccination supplies.
Amin has just one other full-time employee, Jacquelyn Ziegler,
and two pharmacy student 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 has kind of like filtered
into this one space," said event planner Courtney Marengo, one
of Amin's volunteers.
Amin said he did not set out to own a pharmacy. But he moved to
fill a void left when Skippack, a 50-year-old local institution,
was bought out by national giant CVS in 2018. The chain acquired
Skippack Pharmacy's assets but left it shuttered. Amin bought
the pharmacy from CVS before the pandemic in hopes of keeping
the resource in the community.
"I feel like sometimes things fall into your lap at certain
points in your life," he said. "You might not have planned for
it to happen, but things happen for the right reason."
(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Hannah Beier in Schwenksville,
Pennsylvania; writing by Maria Caspani; editing by Donna Bryson
and Lisa Shumaker)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
