Walgreens is changing its Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination schedule after federal health officials noted that the drugstore chain has quietly decided to separate doses for a longer period than recommended, according to a report.
Federal guidelines require the two-dose series to be administered at least 21 days apart, but Walgreens has extended the range to four weeks to facilitate logistics, reports the New York Times.
Second shots should be taken “as close as possible to the recommended interval,” advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), although the federal agency says the interval can be extended to up to six weeks.
USA AVERAGE 3.1M COVID-19 VACCINES PER DAY, YOUNGER DEMOGRAPHY SELLING PEAKS IN CASES
CDC spokeswoman Kate Grusich said the agency had asked Walgreens to stop using the extended dosage range.
The company’s medical director, Dr. Kevin Ban, said that Walgreens aligned the four-week dosing intervals with vaccines developed by Moderna, also administered in the pharmacy chain, and Ban said that this was “the easiest way to resist to the process based on our capabilities at the time, “wrote the newspaper. The extended break supposedly left some customers confused.
“We have automatically scheduled patients’ second doses to occur at least 28 days after the first dose to ensure that no doses are administered before the authorized intervals and patients are able to complete the serial vaccination,” wrote the Walgreens spokesman , Jim Cohn, in part in a statement to Fox News.
Walgreens administered more than 8 million COVID-19 vaccines and will adjust its schedule to allow people to schedule their second dose of Pfizer “within three weeks” this week, Cohn wrote.
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Fox News has requested additional comments from the CDC.
“The Pfizer and BioNTech Phase 3 study for the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to assess the safety and efficacy of the vaccine after a 2-dose, 21-day schedule,” wrote Pfizer in a statement shared with Fox News. “The safety and efficacy of the vaccine have not been evaluated in different dosing schedules, since the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design.”
Pfizer also said it was “critical” that health officials “conduct surveillance efforts in any alternative scheme implemented and to ensure that each recipient receives as much protection as possible, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine.”
Top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have already advised the public to adhere to authorized dosing and vaccination schedules: two doses 21 days apart for the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and two doses 28 days apart for the Modern COVID- 19 vaccine. That statement came to light after reports that the US FDA was in talks with officials at Moderna and Operation Warp Speed to consider halving the dose of vaccines to speed up inoculations and extend delivery.
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“At the moment, suggesting changes in dosage or FDA-authorized schedules for these vaccines is premature and has no solid roots in the available evidence,” says the statement. “Without appropriate data to support such changes in vaccine administration, we are at significant risk of putting public health at risk, undermining historic vaccination efforts to protect the population of COVID-19.”