Walgreens is shifting its Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination schedule after federal health officials noted that the pharmacy chain had quietly decided to dispense doses over a longer than recommended period, according to a report.
According to federal guidelines, the two-dose series should be administered at least 21 days apart, but Walgreens has pushed the spacing to four weeks for easier logistics, reports the New York Times.
The second shots should be given ‘as close to the recommended interval as possible’, the Centers for Diease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends, although the federal agency says the interval can be pushed up to six weeks apart.
US AVERAGE 3.1M COVID-19 BELKSTIKER PER DAY, YOUNGER DEMOGRAPH SEE SPIKES IN CASE
However, according to CDC spokeswoman Kate Grusich, the agency asked Walgreens to stop the extended dose range.
The chief medical officer of the company, dr. Kevin Ban, said that Walgreens aligned the four-week dosing intervals with the vaccines developed by Moderna, which were also administered in the pharmacy chain, and Ban said that this was’ the easiest way to set up the process. based on our abilities at the time, ‘the newspaper wrote. The long interval apparently left customers confused.
“We automatically scheduled the second doses of patients to find a minimum of 28 days after their first dose, to ensure that no dose is administered earlier than the authorized intervals, and that patients can complete the series vaccination,” Jim said. Cohn spokesman Cohn wrote in a statement to Fox News.
Walgreens has administered more than 8 million COVID-19 vaccines and will adjust its scheduler so that people can arrange a second dose of Pfizer appointments this week, ‘Cohn writes.
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Fox News requested additional comments from the CDC.
“Pfizer and BioNTech’s Phase 3 study for the COVID-19 vaccine is designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine according to a two-dose schedule separated by 21 days,” Pfizer said in a statement. Fox News shared. “The safety and efficacy of the vaccine were not evaluated on different dosing schedules, as the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design.”
Pfizer also said it is ‘critical’ health officials to oversee alternative schedules being implemented and to ensure that each recipient receives the maximum possible protection, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine. ‘
Top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have previously advised the public to adhere to the authorized scheduling and vaccination schedules: two doses 21 days apart for Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and two doses 28 days apart for the Modern COVID- 19 vaccine. This statement came after reports that the US FDA was in talks with officials from Moderna and Operation Warp Speed to halve the dose volume of vaccines to speed up vaccinations and increase supply.
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“At present, the proposal for changes to the FDA-authorized dosage or schedules of these vaccines is premature and is not firmly rooted in the available evidence,” the statement said. “Without appropriate data supporting such changes in vaccine administration, we run a significant risk of endangering public health, undermining the historic vaccination efforts to protect the population against COVID-19.”