Centennial Pharmacy works directly with the City of Philadelphia and State of PA to perform various vaccinations. They are currently receiving 2,000 vaccinations a week of the Pfizer vaccination and have allotted enough for our building. Centennial is also administering vaccinations at some of our neighboring condominiums
(I spoke with the doctors on site Tuesday, and they told me they had already vaccinated vulnerable older residential housing, including HUD housing throughout the City, Ruth Williams House, Casa Farnese apartments, William Penn House, and Kennedy house in Center City).

On Tuesday, March 2^nd, Centennial will come to the building and perform vaccines for all Philadelphian residents and staff who are currently classified as level 1A (My husband often calls our building a cross between a cruise ship and a retirement home), and 1B Centennial has confirmed that anyone living in, or working in, a congregate setting is considered a 1B. Nurse’s aides or outside help of our residents will also be eligible. This will NOT be open to the public.

Before this email I hadn’t heard that this was possible (I had signed up, and was just waiting to be called, I am in 1B with my ailments but wasn’t nervous of getting Covid19 having already had it a year ago 3/16/20), but after I tweeted about our building getting vaccinated today, many media people inquired about it online and eventually asking city officials, and it turns out that this was a well orchestrated effort with officials, and is happening in all 50 states. Once the Covid-19 vaccine became more widely available in the past few weeks the rollout began at fast pace.

You see the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) worked with states to select initial pharmacy partners based on a number of factors including their ability to reach some of the populations most at risk for severe illness from COVID-19 and as availability increased opened it up to other pharmacies. Centennial Pharmacy is one of those drug stores which was eligible. They they screened a list of applicants who had applied for this kind of large scale operation and fit the criteria, and basically this is how it happened.

My building has a majority of residents over the age of 70, many in their 80s to early 100s. One 106 year old women even survived covid virus last year.

Our building has 776 units, and over 800 residents were vaccinated. The building consists of 3 wings, and the doctors started at the top floor around 11am vaccinating the workers, retail workers as we have a supermarket, drug store, Little Pete’s, doctor’s offices, NovaCare, hearing aid store, and home nurses aides who weren’t on duty, working there way down, finishing about 5:30pm)

I was impressed how they vaccinated the building: They did a great job. They brought in 6 teams. They started with the office workers, nurses aides, and staff. Then hit the top floors and the middle floors to do 800 residents in 5 hours.

My neighbors and I are very grateful for the Philadelphian Management for their year of amazing management of covid19 pandemic procedures, the safety procedures, the positive messages and so much behind the scenes management to keep us safe. I personally want to thank the Covid19 Task Force of volunteers for their service to my family, and to many residents who were diagnosed with Covid19 and quarantine, or were just quarantining for safety, some for the entire year in their apartments; the task force delivered our mail, removed our trash we left outside of our apartments, and managed our deliveries. Thoughts and prayers for those who passed from Covid19, especially our dear neighbors who will be missed.