Starting Friday, more vaccination shots will be given to Americans with the start of a federal program that will deliver doses directly to drugstores and grocery store pharmacies.
The program will start small, with one million doses of vaccine distributed to approximately 6,500 pharmacies. Over time, it will expand to as many as 40,000 drugstores and groceries.
Although some states have begun to use a limited number of pharmacies to administer doses in recent weeks, the delivery of vaccines directly from the federal government to pharmacies marks a new chapter in the US vaccination campaign.
On Friday, Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid, among other retailers, will begin administering vaccines to eligible people based on state guidelines in restricted locations around the country. Walgreens will have vaccines available in 22 states and Puerto Rico; Rite Aid will initially receive direct federal allocations in five states, as well as Philadelphia and New York City; and CVS will offer vaccines in 18 states and Puerto Rico.
Those eligible to receive the doses can check the pharmacy websites for availability, and many of the initial appointment schedules are already taken.
The federal program, which is designed not to cut doses assigned to states, begins a day after President Biden said his administration had secured enough vaccine doses to inoculate every American adult. (That news came with a plea for patience: Mr. Biden said logistical hurdles would likely mean many Americans still haven’t been vaccinated by the end of the summer.)
Mr Biden complained Thursday about the “gigantic” logistical challenge facing his administration. “It’s one thing to have the vaccine, it’s another to have vaccinators,” he said during a performance at the National Institutes of Health.
He also expressed open frustration with the previous government.
“While scientists did their job to discover vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be blunt about it – didn’t do his job to prepare for the daunting challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” said Mr. Biden.
Health officials in the Trump administration have pushed back on those suggestions, noting hundreds of briefings that Department of Health and Human Services officials offered the incoming health team, including on vaccine allocation and distribution.
A deal for an additional 200 million vaccine doses announced Thursday helps deliver on a pledge Mr Biden made in January to ramp up the offer to cover more of the population. He then said the government was nearing a deal with two manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, as part of its larger pledge that about 300 million Americans would receive a vaccination dose by the end of the summer or the beginning of the fall.
On Thursday, he said his administration “had now bought enough vaccine to vaccinate all Americans.”