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THE ANGELS
THE ANGELS A former Arkansas health official is raising alarm at the rate of coronavirus vaccine delivery to residents of long-term care facilities under a US plan blaming major pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens for many of the shots.
According to the state health department, less than 10% of the doses assigned to those seniors in Arkansas have been administered. The two pharmacies partner with about 40% of the state facilities. Some of them were told they were scheduled for February or March, said Dr. Joe Thompson, former Arkansas surgeon general and CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
“This is not acceptable,” said Thompson. “We see a failure in implementation by CVS and Walgreens.”
Federal health officials in recent days have urged tens of millions of Americans to expand the vaccine’s suitability to speed the rollout of the national vaccination program. Meanwhile, in some long-term care settings – which account for about 1% of the US population but 40% of COVID-19 deaths, and who have had to lead the way – continue to wait.
State and local officials and long-term care operators in states, including Florida, California, Arizona, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, told Reuters they have turned to alternative providers of vaccinations for their residents or staff because the pharmacy chains planned admissions weeks in advance .
About 75,000 long-term care facilities have signed up to receive vaccines from CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc under the Pharmacy Partnership Program of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“I think they are dealing with serious bandwidth issues in terms of planning,” said David Grabowski, Harvard Medical School professor and health care policy expert. ‘I find it very painful that we have not done this faster. This is really a matter of life or death. ‘
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said in a statement Thursday that the two pharmacy chains assured him that all long-term care residents assigned to them would be vaccinated by the end of this month.
Many states prioritized homes with patients in need of medical care, adding to delays at other long-term care facilities.
CVS said it plans to finish all shots at assigned facilities within nine to 12 weeks of the first dose. That means states like California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, which were among the last to activate the second phase of vaccinations in hospitals, may not be ready until April.
“State decisions about which facilities to activate when will have a significant impact on timing,” said CVS spokesman TJ Crawford, noting that the company has taken 1 million shots and is on track with its federal agreement.
Other hurdles included confirmation of vaccine availability, the winter holidays, vaccine hesitation and new COVID-19 outbreaks, the companies said.
That resulted in “a slightly slower start than we hoped. Now that we are past the first of the year, you see a rapid and rapid acceleration,” said Rick Gates, senior vice president of Walgreens pharmacy and healthcare. The company has shot more than 500,000 shots and expects to be ready in March.
‘OVERWOODED BY THE SHEER VOLUME’
Meanwhile, Seminole County in central Florida is deploying mobile clinics for some assisted living facilities.
“We went because they were either not contacted by the private providers or they were concerned about some problem,” said Alan Harris, the county emergency manager.
“CVS and Walgreens, I think, are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of long-term care facilities in Florida,” Harris said.
The state of Florida has hired health agency CDR Maguire to take over vaccinations at approximately 1,900 residential care centers that scheduled CFS or Walgreens on or after Jan. 24.
Los Angeles County has withdrawn from the CFS-Walgreens partnership and is requesting facilities that can collect and administer the vaccine themselves. In Contra Costa County, Northern California, nonprofit Choice in Aging joined John Muir Health and Kaiser Permanente to help.
Choice in Aging focuses on facilities with six or fewer beds in historically disadvantaged communities. “This is a population that will never be prioritized,” said Debbie Toth, CEO of Choice in Aging.
The CDC said on Thursday that 26% of the 4.7 million vaccine doses assigned to long-term care sites had been administered, falling even behind the pitiful 36% of the 30.6 million available nationwide.
Image: Vaccine Rollout in Nursing Homes – Here
West Virginia, which retired from CDC Pharmacy Partnership, made extensive planning and leveraged its existing network of long-term care pharmacies to rapidly vaccinate nursing home residents in an all-hands-on-deck effort, said Dr. of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.
“Community pharmacies absolutely need to be involved,” said Scott Knoer, CEO of the American Pharmacists Association. “I wish they had been there from the start.”
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein and Deena Beasley; additional reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York; edited by Peter Henderson, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)