WASHINGTON – The United States will begin sending doses of the Covid-19 vaccine directly to retail pharmacies next week, as the Biden administration expands how and where Americans can be vaccinated.
The initial shipment of 1 million doses will go to 6,500 stores as of February 11, said Jeffrey Zients, Covid-19 coordinator for the Biden administration.
The states were left by the Trump administration to devise their own distribution plans and some chose to use retail pharmacies in their states to help administer the vaccine to certain groups, such as healthcare professionals.
Pharmacies that receive the vaccine directly from the federal government will still need to follow your state’s guidelines for determining which populations should receive the injections. Americans should check the local pharmacy website to make an appointment if they fall into one of their state’s priority groups, he said.
The first pharmacies to receive the vaccine from the federal government will be those that are best placed to serve people at high risk for serious illness and “socially vulnerable” populations, said Zients.
In the end, 40,000 pharmacies across the country will receive shipments of the vaccine, but Zients did not say when he expected this to happen. Until now, hospitals and state health departments administered the vast majority of vaccine doses.
“The initial phase of activating local pharmacies will have more gun injections,” said Zients. “This will ensure that pharmacies have the infrastructure and experience they need to grow when vaccine supplies increase in the coming months.”
CVS said on Tuesday that it will receive 250,000 of those doses from the federal government next week. The national chain plans to start giving vaccines at 300 of its stores, including 100 in California and 70 in Texas. CVS has 10,000 stores across the country.
In addition to the 1 million doses that the government plans to send to retail pharmacies, they also plan to send 10.5 million doses a week to state governments for the next three weeks. The Biden administration has increased the number of doses sent to states by 20 percent since taking over the vaccine delivery program on January 20.
President Joe Biden has pledged to give at least 100 million injections in his first 100 days in office and said he expects that number to reach 150 million. To date, 32 million doses have been administered since the first vaccine was approved on December 11.
Zients said the harsh climate in much of the northeastern United States has not diminished federal government shipments of the vaccine, although some states have closed administration sites.
