Some residents of nursing homes in the United States face delays for COVID-19 vaccines despite extreme risk

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Former Arkansas health official is sounding the alarm on the pace of coronavirus vaccine delivery to residents of long-term care facilities as part of a US plan which puts the big pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens in charge of most vaccines.

Less than 10% of the doses assigned to these Arkansas seniors have been administered, according to the state health department. The two pharmacies work with about 40% of state facilities. Some of them were told they were scheduled for February or March, said Dr Joe Thompson, former Arkansas surgeon general and executive director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement.

“It’s not acceptable,” said Thompson. “We are seeing a failed deployment of CVS and Walgreens.”

In recent days, federal health officials have urged expansion of vaccine eligibility to tens of millions of Americans in order to expedite the rollout of the national immunization program. Meanwhile, seniors in some long-term care facilities – who make up about 1% of the U.S. population but 40% of COVID-19 deaths and were supposed to be on the front lines – continue to wait.

State and local officials and long-term care operators in states such as Florida, California, Arizona, Indiana and Pennsylvania told Reuters they have turned to other providers vaccines for their residents or staff, as drugstore chains scheduled injections weeks later.

Some 75,000 long-term care facilities have signed up to receive vaccines from CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc under the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Pharmaceutical Partnership Program.

“I think they are facing serious bandwidth issues in terms of planning,” said David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School professor and health policy expert. “I find it very painful that we did not do this faster. It really is a matter of life and death. “

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson in a statement released Thursday said the two drugstore chains had assured him that all long-term care residents assigned to them would be vaccinated by the end of the month .

Many states have prioritized homes with patients requiring medical attention, which has contributed to delays at other long-term care facilities.

CVS said it plans to complete all injections at assigned facilities within nine to 12 weeks of the first dose. This means that states like California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, which were among the last to activate the second phase of facility vaccinations, may not be completed before. April.

“State decisions on activated facilities have a significant impact on the timing,” said CVS spokesperson TJ Crawford, noting that the company has administered 1 million shots and is on track with its federal deal. .

Other hurdles included confirmation of vaccine availability, winter vacations, reluctance to vaccinate and new outbreaks of COVID-19, the companies said.

This resulted in “a bit slower start than we expected.” Now that we’re past the first of the year, you’re seeing rapid and rapid acceleration, ”said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare at Walgreens. The company has taken more than 500,000 shots and expects it to be taken by March.

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Meanwhile, Seminole County in central Florida is rolling out mobile clinics in some assisted living centers.

“We went because they hadn’t been contacted by the private providers or because they had concerns about some type of issue,” county emergency manager Alan Harris said.

“CVS and Walgreens, I think, are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of long-term care facilities in Florida,” Harris said.

The state of Florida hired health services company CDR Maguire to handle vaccinations at approximately 1,900 assisted living centers that CVS or Walgreens had scheduled for January 24 or later.

Los Angeles County has chosen not to join the CVS-Walgreens partnership and is asking establishments who can procure and administer the vaccine themselves. In Contra Costa County, northern California, the nonprofit Choice in Aging has joined forces with John Muir Health and Kaiser Permanente to help.

Choice in Aging targets facilities with six or fewer beds in historically underserved communities. “It’s a population that is never a priority,” said Debbie Toth, CEO of Choice in Aging.

The CDC said Thursday that 26% of the 4.7 million doses of vaccine allocated to long-term care sites had been administered, even behind the 36% of the 30.6 million available nationwide.

Graphic: deployment of the vaccine in nursing homes –

West Virginia, which opted out of the CDC Pharmacy Partnership, did extensive planning and leveraged its existing network of long-term care pharmacies to rapidly vaccinate nursing home residents as part of the program. a general effort, said Dr. Michael Wasserman, past president. from the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.

“Community pharmacies should definitely be involved,” said Scott Knoer, CEO of the American Pharmacists Association. “I wish they had been from the start.”