Walgreens pharmacist Jessica Sahni prepares a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at The New Jewish Home long-term care center in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York on December 21, 2020.
Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images
Covid vaccines are still hard to find, but that should change in the spring, said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health at Walgreens.
“I would say that the end of March, beginning of April will be the schedule that you will have most broadly across all of our stores across the country from pharmacies and other places to start vaccination,” he said at Healthy Virtual CNBC on Tuesday.
Walgreens is part of a federal pharmacy program that will send doses directly to drugstores this week. The drugstore chain plans to start vaccination on Friday at some of its stores in 15 states, along with Chicago and New York. However, all of these pharmacies will have a limited supply and vaccines will be available only to Americans who qualify as high priority based on factors such as age or medical conditions.
On Tuesday, the Biden government said it would also start sending vaccines to community health centers next week – part of its strategy to reach communities of color and low-income families that may not have a supermarket or pharmacy nearby or may having other barriers to access, such as lack of transportation.
About 43.2 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were administered across the country early Tuesday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 9.8 million people received two doses of the injection. Both vaccines that currently have emergency authorization for use by the Food and Drug Administration – Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines – require two doses.
Gates said he was hopeful that a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson could increase supply. The pharmaceutical company applied for emergency authorization from the FDA last week after releasing data showing that its vaccine was about 66% effective in protecting against the virus. It is a unique vaccine and can be stored in the refrigerator for months.
“It is good news for all of us that there will be more vaccines available,” he said.