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LOS ANGELES
LOS ANGELES A former Arkansas health official is sounding the alarm about the rate of coronavirus vaccines being administered to residents of long-term care facilities, according to a U.S. plan that puts the largest pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens in control of many of the shots.
According to the Department of Health, less than 10% of the doses given to the Arkansas elderly were administered. The two pharmacies operate with about 40% of the state’s facilities. Some of them were told that they would plan for February or March, says dr. Joe Thompson, former Arkansas Surgeon-General and CEO of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.
“It’s not acceptable,” Thompson said. “We see a failure in the deployment by CVS and Walgreens.”
Federal health officials have in recent days called for the expansion of the vaccination of tens to millions of Americans to speed up the implementation of the national vaccination program. Meanwhile, elderly people stay at some long-term care facilities – which make up about 1% of the U.S. population but 40% of COVID-19 deaths – and were supposed to be at the front of the queue.
State officials and local officials and long-term care operators in states including Florida, California, Arizona, Indiana and Pennsylvania told Reuters they turned to alternative providers for vaccinations for their residents or staff because the pharmacy chains scheduled weeks out.
About 75,000 long-term care institutions have signed up to receive vaccinations from CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc under the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Pharmacy Partnership Program.
“I think they have serious bandwidth issues in terms of scheduling,” said David Grabowski, a professor at Harvard Medical School and an expert in health care policy. “I find it very disturbing that we did not do it faster. It is really a matter of life or death.”
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement Thursday that the two pharmacy chains had assured him that all long-term care residents would be vaccinated by the end of this month.
Many states have prioritized homes with patients in need of medical care, which has contributed to delays at other long-term care facilities.
CVS said it plans to complete all shots at allotted facilities within nine to twelve weeks after the first dose. This means that states such as California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, which was one of the last to activate the second phase of vaccinations for facilities, will only be completed in April.
“State decisions about which facilities to activate have a significant impact on timing,” CVS spokeswoman TJ Crawford said, adding that the company fired 1 million shots and was on track with its federal agreement.
Other obstacles include confirming the availability of vaccines, the winter holidays, vaccination of vaccines and fresh COVID-19 outbreaks, the companies said.
It led to a “slightly slower start than we had hoped for. Now that we’re 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 taken more than 500,000 shots and expects it to be done by March.
‘OVERWHELMED BY THE SHEER VOLUME’
Meanwhile, Seminole County in Central Florida is deploying mobile clinics to some relief facilities.
“We went because they were not contacted by the private providers, or because they were worried about some problem,” said Alan Harris, country manager for emergencies.
“CVS and Walgreens, I think, are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of long-term care facilities in Florida,” Harris said.
The state of Florida has hired CDR Maguire, the health care firm, to take over vaccinations at about 1,900 assisted care facilities planned by CVS or Walgreens on January 24 or later.
Los Angeles County has entered into the CVS Walgreens partnership and is asking facilities to take up and administer the vaccine themselves. In the Contra Costa province of Northern California, the non-profit Choice in Aging joined John Muir Health and Kaiser Permanente to help.
Choice in Aging is aimed at facilities with six or fewer beds in communities that are historically underserved. “It’s a population that is never prioritized,” said Debbie Toth, CEO of Choice in Aging.
The CDC said on Thursday that 26% of the 4.7 million vaccine doses allocated for long-term care places had been administered, leaving even the poorest 36% of the 30.6 million available nationwide.
Graph: Explosion of vaccines in old age homes – here
West Virginia, which decided on a CDC Pharmacy Partnership, has done extensive planning and used its existing network of long-term care pharmacies to quickly vaccinate nursing home residents in an effort of all practices, Drs. Michael Wasserman, former president, said. of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.
“Community pharmacies must be absolutely involved,” said Scott Knoer, chief executive of the American Pharmacists’ Association. “I wish they would have been from the beginning.”
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein and Deena Beasley; additional reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)