Long term care facilities across PA are saying the process of vaccinating residents is too slow, some have gotten the vaccine this month but other have to wait until February.

Experts say fast vaccination of long-term care residents could cut the overall Covid death toll by nearly half by March.

Local nursing homes like Brevillier Village and Pleasant Ridge both tell Erie News Now they got the vaccine already for their long term care residents, while other facilities across Pennsylvania are frustrated at the slow process to vaccinate the aging population compared to many other states.

LeadingAge Pa Senior Vice President, Anne Henry tells Erie News Now that long term care facilities have gotten vaccinated or have dates to get the shot but, they're really concerned about personal care and assisted living facilities,"we're beginning to see some of them getting dates for their first clinics but, it's very few there is about 1,200 personal care or assisted living facilities across the common wealth so to know that they are just now starting to get dates is a little frightening for us."

About 75% of Pennsylvania's Covid deaths have involved people over the age of 65.

"Personal care and assisted living and those individuals are about the same age range, general have a lot of the same frailties as those in nursing homes," says Henry. "They are really slow to get started in Pennsylvania, statistics really tell it all when we look at the number of cases, we look at the number of deaths they certainly do skew higher to the 65 plus population."

Brevillier Village says they're excited their long term care facility was one of the ones who already received the first doses of the covid vaccine but, there's still a long way to go.

"Frustrations are starting to occur as we wait for pending permission of the vaccines to be released in personal care homes and also independent living," says Director of Development, Maureen Rizzo. "That's part is a little bit frustrating, I think once the Governor releases permission for the Walgreens specialty to begin vaccinating. We are excited for that to happen, we just don't know when."

LeadingAge Pa says they're just waiting on the State Health Department to tell them when assisted living and personal care facilities ca get the vaccine.

"Urging them to work with us on a plan and that's really what we have been doing all along with the pandemic, is urging the department to really work with us in a way that makes sense, so in this case push the vaccine out much more quickly to these individuals who are living in these campus type settings," says Henry.