- CVS and Walgreens have been criticized by health officials for the slow implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine in nursing homes, CNN reported.
- As part of the federal government’s program to vaccinate elderly people in custody, the two companies say they are on track to receive the first of two doses by January 25.
- But health officials in many states said progress was weak, hampered by bureaucracy.
- West Virginia, which opted out of the program, made much faster progress, relying on its network of smaller pharmacies with good ties to the community, reported The Conversation.
- Walgreens did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. CVS told Insider that vaccinations are going according to plan.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
CVS and Walgreens are being criticized by local authorities because of the slow implementation of their nursing home vaccination program.
As of January 14, about a quarter of the 4.7 million doses allocated to companies had been administered by CNN.
CVJ spokesman TJ Crawford told Insider that the process is going according to plan. Both companies told CNN that they are on track to complete the first round of the two-stage vaccine by January 25.
But health officials in some states have said the process has been frustratingly slow.
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The director of a network of nursing homes in LA County, Dr. Karl Steinberg, told CNN: “It’s been a lot worse than anyone expected. That light at the end of the tunnel is dim.”
Mississippi state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs described the partnership between the pharmacy giants and the federal government as a “fiasco”.
President Donald Trump’s administration has left the coordination of the general launch of vaccination to the states, as reported by Insider Hilary Brueck.
CVS and Walgreens became the only ones hired for a large part of the launch under an agreement announced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in October 2020.
Company name recognition and corporate weight are seen as a boost to public confidence in vaccine processing, as reported by Áine Cain, Irene Jiang and Shelby Livingston of Business Insider.
Without a comprehensive federal program for distribution, most states have opted for the CVS-Walgreens partnership to bring the vaccine to nursing homes.
A January 6 CVS 6 company statement said the company is on track with its goal, with new president Karen Lynch saying on January 15 that she administered one million vaccines in nursing homes. In total, 1.7 million shots were administered by CVS and Walgreens together, The New York Times reported on Jan. 16.
A CVS spokesman, Joe Goode, told CNN: “Everything went as planned, except for a few cases where we were challenged or found it difficult to contact long-term care institutions to schedule clinics.”
But it has been plagued by problems, such as heavy bureaucracy and understaffed centers, CNN reported.
Speaking of Seattle, where Walgreens and CVS are administering most vaccines in nursing homes, NPR’s Will Stone said health facilities are “absolutely desperate to give injections”, but are “basically at the mercy of when CVS or Walgreens program them. “
Crawford, the CVS spokesman, told Insider: “It is critical to note that activation dates are selected by states”, adding that most states chose to activate the partnership in January.
Authorities that have not joined the partnership are moving much faster. West Virginia – a state that opted out of the program – is leading the country in the distribution of vaccines for nursing homes, as the Associated Press reported.
Vaccines in nursing homes began two weeks earlier than in most states, NPR reported.
Prof. Tinglong Dai, an operations specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, writing for The Conversation, said the near monopoly that CVS and Walgreens have gives them little reason to work faster.
Crawford told Insider that this characterization is “an insult to the thousands of CVS healthcare professionals who have administered injections to one of our most vulnerable populations in the past month, in many cases going from room to room”.
They also already have strong ties to the local community and their nursing homes, he wrote – an important factor in a process that requires explanation and consent from vulnerable people and their families.
In West Virginia, each nursing home is served by more than one pharmacy for the process, which leads to a rush to reach out and organize doses, he wrote.
Krista Capehart, director of regulation for the state’s Pharmacy Council, is leading the West Virginia distribution plan.
She told NPR: “When [the vaccine] we arrived here, we already had pharmacies equated with inpatient care, so we were already ready to have vaccinators and pharmacists ready to enter these establishments and start giving the first doses ”.
Crawford argued that CVS also has strong local connections.
On January 15, President-elect Joe Biden announced an increase in federal support for the process – which was well received by Walgreens and CVS.
Lynch, the CVS executive, said in a statement that federal assistance will allow the company to administer more than 1 million injections per day – far more than it has so far.
Walgreens did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.