60% of nursing home staff refused the shots, Walgreens executive says

Many Americans logged into websites before sunrise, lined up and drove for hours to get their Covid shot.

Yet in nursing homes, the experience has been the opposite: about 60% of workers in long-term care facilities have refused vaccines, said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health. from Walgreens. He said about 20% of residents had refused vaccines.

“We’re seeing a reluctance towards vaccines – especially among those working in these facilities – that was higher than expected,” he said Tuesday at CNBC’s Healthy Returns virtual event.

Walgreens and CVS Health have been chosen by the federal government to administer vaccines to residents and staff of thousands of long-term care facilities across the country. Residents of nursing homes and assisted living were at the top of the list, along with health workers, as they have had a disproportionate number of outbreaks and deaths from Covid-19.

Denied vaccines indicate another challenge the country will face, especially as pharmacies and community clinics receive more doses of the vaccine: Persuading the majority of Americans to get the life-saving vaccine, which will help protect the general public and allow the economy to gradually return. to a certain degree of normality.

Gates said excess vaccines from long-term care facilities were eventually returned to states or given to other high priority people.

Starting Friday, Walgreens will offer vaccines in select stores in 15 states, as well as the jurisdictions of Chicago and New York City, as part of a federal pharmacy program. It will deliver the vaccines to priority groups in those stores, such as older Americans or people with health problems.

Gates said the drugstore chain looks forward to playing a bigger role in the vaccination effort, but said “vaccine availability is the biggest hurdle.” He said he expects doses to be more widely available to the general public at all Walgreens stores in late March or early April.