WASHINGTON – The U.S. will begin sending doses of the Covid-19 vaccine directly to retail pharmacies next week, as the government in Biden continues to expand on how and where Americans can be vaccinated.
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The initial shipment of 1 million doses will go to 6,500 stores from Feb. 11, said Jeffrey Zients, the Covid-19 coordinator of the Biden administration.
States were left by the Trump administration to draw up their own distribution plans, and some chose to use retail pharmacies in their states to administer the vaccine to certain groups, such as health care workers.
Pharmacies that receive the vaccine directly from the federal government will still have to follow their guidelines to determine which populations should receive the injections. Americans should look at their local pharmacy website to make an appointment if they fall into one of their state’s priority groups, he said.
The first pharmacies to receive the vaccine from the federal government are the ones that are best at reaching people at high risk for serious diseases and ‘socially vulnerable’ populations, Zients said.
Eventually, 40,000 pharmacies across the country will receive shipments of the vaccine, but Zients did not say when he expected that to happen. To date, hospitals and state health departments have administered the vast majority of vaccine doses.
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FOLLOWING
“The first phase of activating local pharmacies will get more shots in the arms,” Zients said. “This will ensure that pharmacies have the infrastructure and experience they need to scale up as vaccine supply increases in the coming months.”
In addition to the 1 million doses the administration plans to send to retail pharmacies, they also continue to send 10.5 million doses per week to state governments for the next three weeks. The administration of Biden has increased the number of doses sent to the states by 20 percent since the vaccination distribution program was adopted on January 20th.
President Joe Biden has pledged to give at least 100 million shots in his first 100 days in office and said he hopes the number could be as much as 150 million. To date, 32 million doses have been administered since the first vaccine was approved on 11 December.
Zients said severe weather in much of the northeastern United States did not delay the shipment of the federal government vaccine, although some states had to close the administration premises.
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