The U.S. vaccination of vaccines began slowly, but the federal long-term care partnership was the target of particular criticism because it was slow.
“The states are frustrated,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.
Hannan pointed to a slower-than-expected intake among long-term care staff and an overestimation of the amount of doses required. Retail pharmacists were not familiar with cooperating with this population – for example, they require permission from people who may not be able to consent themselves.
“It should not be the ‘Hunger Games’ like with PPE. It was ridiculous and we all had to play that game,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox told a news conference last month.
“That Walgreens and CVS have a partnership with the federal government, there is now all the backlog in every state,” Cox added.
“The last thing we would do was … hold on”
Both CVS and Walgreens acknowledge that there has been an overestimation of how many doses may be needed.
To determine what was set aside for the long-term pharmacy program, they took the number of beds in each participating facility and multiplied by two to be able to account for staff as well. According to the CDC, the federal partnership covers more than 70,000 long-term care facilities nationwide.
In addition, the pharmacy chains both quoted higher than expected vaccinations for the vaccination among staff members in the care facility.
In an email to CNN, the CDC said that in the first weeks of implementation, the agency ‘requires law enforcement to provide adequate vaccine provision to support efforts to plan vaccination clinics at (long-term care facilities) nationwide and to address any interruptions or delays therein. avoid. on-site vaccination attempts. “
Walgreen’s medical officer, dr. Kevin Ban, Chris Cuomo of CNN told CNN: ‘We found ourselves in a situation where we had more vaccine than we needed – the last thing we would do was keep it ever – and so immediately done was to get in touch with the states to make sure we comply with their wishes.
“Walgreens do not determine who is vaccinated, we are the last mile of this, it is we who actually distribute and administer it, but only on the basis of the state’s suitability,” Ban added.
In a statement to CNN, CVS said: ‘In most cases, these’ excess doses’ are not in our possession, but rather earmarked from the state grant. We want gunshots as urgently as the states do, so in some cases we want to ‘proactively ask them to’ reclaim ‘the allocation we do not need, or postpone the allocation of more grants as appropriate.
But the federal program reported directly to the CDC, and states say they were often in the dark about progress at long-term care facilities, said Lori Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
“Our health departments have not had a significant awareness of anything that goes in parallel to hospitals or pharmacies, and that’s really not the way we want to conduct a public health emergency,” Freeman said.
In a call with governors last week, Biden administration officials said they should allocate the vaccines earmarked for the federal program that were not used within a week of delivery.
Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 response team, said Monday that the government is continuing to ensure that doses are allocated to people who will use them.
“We have worked with states and with the distributors to make sure that the excess dose gets to the places where it is needed quickly,” he said.
Doses begin to return to the states
Last week, Utah again allocated 28,275 doses into the hands of the state to be redistributed.
The states of Arkansas and New Jersey are already taking back 30,000 doses. New Jersey also halted the delivery of 44,000 doses allocated to the federal program. The state of New York is giving 50,000 doses again.
In a letter posted on Twitter on Friday, the South Carolina government, Henry McMaster, announced that the state is distributing 37,800 doses to the vaccine providers in the state.
“These surplus vaccines should be made available to members of the general public immediately rather than upon completion of the LTC program,” McMaster wrote.
One state, West Virginia, has decided entirely on the federal partnership. Instead, the established affiliates used local pharmacies to distribute the vaccine.
It has consistently been one of the leading states in terms of the proportion of the distributed doses administered. According to the CDC, West Virginia administered 82% of the doses it received, placing the state second only to North Dakota. Nationally, the rate is about 61%.
The government of West Virginia, Jim Justice, said that bureaucratic thinking must come out of the system.
Justice has proposed a “common sense” approach to the distribution of vaccines, which aims to vaccinate older people first and make the vaccine available in places where people are familiar, including local pharmacies and local health clinics.
“You have to take it to the people,” he said.
The Biden administration announced this week that it will place 1 million doses in the first phase of the retail pharmacy program – a similar partnership between the federal government and retail pharmacies, but this time focused on vaccinating the general public.
Freeman of NACCHO says he hopes there will be clearer communication this time between the federal government and local health officials.
“We could run the risk here again with the federal pharmacy program that needs to be rolled out soon … if we do not make sure we have some degree of transparency and awareness,” she said.
CNN’s Deidre McPhillips, Christopher Rios and Samira Said contributed to this report