Many Americans have logged on to websites before sunrise, waited in long lines and drove hours to get Covid vaccines.
However, in nursing homes, many people have reacted in the opposite direction to vaccination opportunities: about 60 percent of long-term care facility employees turned down shots, Rick said. Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health care at Walgreens. He said about 20% of residents rejected the vaccines.
“We saw the vaccine falter, especially among those working at these facilities, which was higher than we expected,” he told CNBC’s Healthy Returns virtual event on Tuesday.
Walgreens and CVS Health were chosen by the federal government to administer vaccines to residents and staff at thousands of long-term care facilities across the country. Elderly residence and assisted living residents topped the list of priorities, along with health workers, because they have had a disproportionate number of Covid-19 outbreaks and deaths.
Rejected vaccines point to another challenge the country will face, especially as community pharmacies and clinics receive more doses of the vaccine: persuading most Americans to have the life-saving vaccine, which will help to protect the general public and allow the economy to gradually return to some degree of normalcy.
Gates said the overdose of vaccine from long-term care facilities was returned to the states or given to other high-priority people.
Starting Friday, Walgreens will offer vaccines in some stores in 15 states, along with the cities of Chicago and New York, as part of a federal pharmacy program. He will administer the vaccines to priority groups in those stores, such as older Americans or people with medical conditions.
Gates said the pharmacy chain hopes to play a more important role in the vaccination effort, but that “vaccine availability is the main hurdle.” He said he expects the doses to be more available to the general public at all Walgreens stores in late March or early April.
Judy Druin is vaccinated by pharmacist Joe Borge in Danvers, MA, on February 1, 2021. On the first day of Phase 2 of the launch of COVID-19, seniors, age 75 or older, are vaccinated at Walgreens Pharmacy, at 107 High Street. , a Danvers.
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