Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health care at Walgreens, told CNBC that getting vaccines to the general public “won’t be a mess,” as the FDA authorized Modern’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use and he put in place plans to get the states to be almost none. 6 million doses early next week.
“What you’ll see is that we’ll be very thoughtful about how we schedule appointments, how we work with the communities we’re in, the states we’re in priority populations for, to make sure there’s no long queue at the doors of pharmacies and making sure people have safe, comfortable and efficient ways to get vaccines, ”Gates said.
Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine was rolled out to long-term care facilities on Friday, and Walgreens pharmacists administered many of those vaccines. The federal government has agreements with Walgreens and other pharmacies, including CVS, to vaccinate millions of people across the country. In a Friday evening interview in “The News with Shepard Smith,” Gates described how the training received by the organization’s pharmacists prepares them to effectively administer the Covid-19 vaccine.
“The safety protocol we’ve given our pharmacists in training, up front, how to look for allergic reactions, how to make sure they’re monitoring patients after the vaccine, it’s all part of the normal process,” Gates said. .
To date, the United States has vaccinated at least 66,000 people, according to publicly available data collected from 20 states, and that number is expected to increase dramatically as more states report their numbers. Gates acknowledged that the vaccination process involves a lot of organization, but stressed that “vaccines are what we do constantly, and monitoring patients after a vaccine is a very common thing we think about flu vaccines. , Shingrix or other vaccines that are out there. “
Host Shepard Smith asked Gates how Walgreens would take care of diverting people who come to their pharmacies to get vaccinated, but who are not in a priority population. Gates explained that vaccines will be pre-programmed and will not be given the “walk-up” format, like flu vaccines. He added that Walgreens pharmacies across the country will work with states and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure they get them to those people who need vaccines. Gates added that there would also be reminders for people to receive their second dose.
“For the population. We’ll have all kinds of reminders, phone calls, if necessary, to make sure Americans know they need to get that second dose and the right time for that dose,” Gates said.