LCH, CCIU team up for vaccine equity in migrant student population

LCH Health and Community Services is working with the Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU)’s Migrant Education program to ensure vaccine equity in the migrant student population. Migrant families who have moved to Chester County in the past three years and have minor children are eligible for vaccine referrals. LCH, with three health center locations in Chester County, provides primary care, pediatric...

Rabid GOP now feeding on their own

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa If they held a local competition for “off the rails” in politics, Chester County Republican Chair Gordon Eck would win by a landslide.  His — I won’t dignify it by calling it an Op/Ed — recently published screed attacking a fellow Republican and local Board of Education president over the fake issue of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in our county’s...

DCCC to require vaccines in Jan. 22

Citing the increase in COVID-19 Delta variant cases in Delaware and Chester Counties, Delaware County Community College President Dr. L. Joy Gates Black announced today that the College will require proof of vaccination of all students, faculty and staff beginning next year.  During a virtual meeting this morning, Dr. Gates Black urged the College family to get the vaccine because it is “our best...

County: high vaccination rates have COVID case numbers falling

Chester County Health Officials announced Thursday that 83 percent of all eligible Chester County residents (age 12 and above) are partially or fully vaccinated against COVID-19.  Taking it one step further, of those age 18 and over (which follows the Governor’s benchmark), 92 percent are partially or fully vaccinated.  According to county health officials, these figures indicate that Chester County...

County, state continue to clash over vaccine distribution

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa While President Joe Biden announced that states will have to allow universal scheduling of COVID-19 vaccine appointments after May 1 for everyone over age 18, local officials continue to express worry that the state Department of Health is still not sending the county its fair share of vaccine, leading to widespread frustration by those in the first phase...

Better days are coming, hang in there

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa It’s not hard to see that the majority of frustration of folks around Chester County right now is difficulty in scheduling to get a COVID-19 vaccine — if you read social media, it’s everywhere and it is understandable. We’re hitting a wall, annoyed and tired of the pandemic and everything required to keep people safe. It’s been a long year since...

Wolf’s budget proposal is great…and dead on arrival

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa Gov. Tom Wolf introduced his 2021-22 budget, and I have to say it is audacious, ambitious and goes a long way to solve the root problems of much of what has plagued Pennsylvania for more than three decades. It is also, sadly, deader than Elvis. That says more about Pennsylvania and Republicans in the General Assembly than it does about Wolf. Not that...

Inner Nature: Vaccine Formulations

By Vidya Rajan, Columnist, The Times In early October, I was listening to Weekend Edition on National Public Radio when an interview with the Executive Director of Shark Allies, Stefanie Brendl, came on the air [1]. Her concern was urgent: a world-wide coronavirus vaccine that could contain the ingredient squalene, isolated from from shark livers, could lead to over a half-million sharks being harvested...

Sunday Punch: Shut down Mariner East II, for good

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times Would you allow a five-year-old to run amuck in your neighborhood with a grenade? I’d like to think not, as the odds of it ending well are pretty small. So, allowing Sunoco/Energy Transfer Partners, a corporation who acts nearly as responsibly as a five-year-old, to continue building a pipeline across Chester County, near homes, schools and retirement communities...