Then she ‘hit the jackpot’ – she got an appointment two days later, on February 10, to receive the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine at her local Walgreens.
Foster, 65, immediately returned to the Walgreens website to schedule an appointment for her husband, but all remaining appointments were taken.
“It was like getting concert tickets,” Foster said. “They’re just gone within minutes.”
Many pharmacies have told CNN that they are capable of receiving and administering much more doses.
But he added: “As for the capacity of pharmacies, we have not yet optimized it.”
This is because the first phase of the Federal Retail Pharmacy program was launched with 1 million doses of vaccine allocated to 6,500 pharmacies, including some CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Rite Aid sites.
The program, which began the week of February 8, allocates a limited amount of Covid-19 vaccine to 21 national pharmacy partners and independent pharmacy networks. As the program grows, Rothholz said, pharmacies will play a role in administering doses along with public health departments, clinics, mobile units and other vaccination sites.
“Everyone who is together will be able to successfully vaccinate individuals according to the national plan, so this is not one approach that will replace all the others. It is everyone who works together to increase access to sites and practitioners where the public is. comfortable to be vaccinated, “Rothholz said.” That is the purpose. “
A call for more vaccines
“As we expand to wider populations, the demand for vaccine continues to outweigh the supply,” Teno said. “We share the enthusiasm of the country to vaccinate people as quickly as possible, but patience is needed as the vaccination stock will continue to build in the coming weeks and months and we can vaccinate more communities.”
Albertsons Companies Inc., a U.S. grocery company headquartered in Boise, Idaho, uses less than 10 percent of its capacity, according to Albertsons spokesman Andrew Whelan. “We have the capacity to administer 150,000 doses every day and can ingest about 90% more in our network,” Whelan told CNN.
Hy-Vee, a chain of supermarkets in the Midwest, told CNN that it is more advantageous to administer more vaccine doses to the public.
“The limited supply of the vaccine was our biggest challenge,” said company spokeswoman Christina Gayman. “We would like to vaccinate every person who inquires, but the supply is still limited.”
Meanwhile, Meijer Inc. since mid-January, 66,000 doses have been administered with an expected additional 30,000 this week, Frank J. Guglielmi, the company’s representative, told CNN. Most doses were administered in Michigan, where Meijer is both a state and federal vaccine partner.
Guglielmi said: “In terms of support, we just need more vaccinations.”
“This is not our first rodeo”
As of Friday morning, Kroger had administered more than 400,000 vaccines in 25 states in suitable populations, as set forth by public health officials.
Through the Federal Retail Pharmacy program, Kroger was allocated 70,000 doses with the expectation of 30,000 additional doses next week.
“We will rely on the strength of our 22,000 Kroger collaborators across the country to lean in and really tense their muscles and get the muscle memory around vaccination,” said Dr. Marc Watkins, Kroger’s chief medical officer, told CNN. “This is not our first rodeo vaccine, and we understand the importance of addressing the challenge of this pandemic now and the distribution of vaccines.”
For Watkins and many other pharmacy leaders, the biggest challenge is ensuring vaccine provision and fair access in communities.
‘We work with government officials and local officials, as well as providing administration to ensure the vaccine dose as quickly as possible, and then maintain a fair distribution of the vaccine as soon as we are in step with the phases, and then make “We’ll make sure we get shots in the arms as soon as possible,” Watkins said.
So far, most pharmacies in the federal program report that the delivery of vaccines arrived on time in the first week of launch and was taken up in arms.
“We received 10,200 doses last week, and Moderna arrived in 100 doses of packaging. 102 of our pharmacies each received 100 doses,” said Jenni Zilka, senior vice president of Good Neighbor Pharmacy’s field programs and services. The company is a network of locally owned independent pharmacies.
“Overall, they are delighted to participate,” Zilka told CNN on Tuesday. “I have examples of someone sending me a photo of how they received the vaccine at 3pm, and by 3:30 they were administering the vaccine and giving pictures of them being administered – so just a lot of excitement.”
Severe winter weather worries
Yet there is one possible setback: increasing concern that early momentum may slow due to extreme winter weather dominating parts of the United States.
Rothholz, of the American Pharmacists Association, told CNN on Thursday that he had not yet heard of any significant delays in delivering vaccine doses to pharmacies. But ‘the key to the success of the program is to know what you’re going to get and to receive it on the time you expected,’ Rothholz said of deliveries.
“The pharmacies must use their appointment-based systems, whether they are their own or those that are by their local jurisdiction, so that patients can be vaccinated,” he said. “You do not want to disappoint a patient by not having the vaccine or canceling appointments. So it is now part of the system, if you want to call it ‘challenge’.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNN on Wednesday that severe weather around the United States is expected to lead to major delays in Covid-19 vaccines and deliveries in the coming days.
“Delivery partners are delivering, where possible, vaccination depending on local conditions, but the adverse weather is expected to continue to affect the shipment of the FedEx facility in Memphis, Tennessee, as well as the UPS facility in Louisville, Ken. “which serve as vaccination centers for different countries,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in a statement.
“CDC and federal partners are working closely with the jurisdictions, as well as manufacturing and shipping partners, to assess weather conditions and to reduce potential delays and cancellations.”
Additional vaccine doses on the go
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would double the offer to our pharmacy program.
2 million doses will be sent to pharmacies across the country this week, she said.
With the increase in vaccine availability, the program is expected to eventually include more than 40,000 pharmacies nationwide.
Foster, in Ohio, did not find an appointment for her husband at a local pharmacy the same day she received one for herself. She did not get one the next day either.
“If I were a minute long, I would try all these different sites, because they would say, ‘We’ll make appointments as soon as we can,’ and their sites – Kroger, CVS – are overwhelmed and they could not respond, ‘ said Foster.
It was not in a pharmacy – but at a local health department in the country.