Many Americans reported to sites before sunrise, waiting in long lines and driving for hours to get Covid vaccines.
Yet many people in nursing homes have reacted the opposite way to vaccination opportunities: About 60% of employees at long-term care facilities have turned down the shots, says Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health care at Walgreens. He said about 20% of residents turned down the vaccines.
“We are seeing the vaccine hesitate – especially among those working in these facilities – which was higher than we expected,” he said on Tuesday at the virtual event of CNBC’s Healthy Returns.
Walgreens and CVS Health have been selected by the federal government to administer vaccines to residents and staff at thousands of long-term care facilities across the country. Nursing homes and assistants along with health workers were at the top of the priority list because they had an excessive number of Covid-19 outbreaks and deaths.
The rejected vaccines point to another challenge facing the country, especially as pharmacies and clinics receive higher doses: to persuade the majority of Americans to get the life-saving vaccine, which will help protect the wider public and the economy. can gradually return to a degree of normalcy.
Gates said excess vaccine doses from long-term care institutions are eventually returned to the states or given to other high-priority people.
Starting Friday, Walgreens will offer vaccinations in some stores in 15 states, as well as the cities of Chicago and New York, as part of a federal pharmacy program. It will administer the vaccines to priority groups in those stores, such as older Americans or people with medical conditions.
Gates said the pharmacy chain is looking to take on a bigger role in the vaccination effort, but that the availability of vaccines is the biggest obstacle. He said he expects doses to be more widely available to the general public in all Walgreens stores by the end of March or early April.
Judy Druin will be vaccinated on February 1, 2021 by pharmacist Joe Borge in Danvers, MA. On the first day of phase 2 of the rollout of COVID-19, elderly people, 75 years and older, are vaccinated at the Walgreens pharmacy at 107 High Street, in Danvers.
Pat Greenhouse | Boston Globe | Getty Images