Walgreens pharmacist Jessica Sahni is preparing a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at The New Jewish Home’s long-term care center in Manhattans Upper West Side in New York on December 21, 2020.
Bryan R. Smith | AFP | Getty Images
Covid vaccines are still hard to come by, but that should change in the spring, said Rick Gates, senior vice president of pharmacy and health care at Walgreens.
“I would say that in late March and early April it will be the calendar that you will have it most widely in all of our nationwide stores of pharmacies and other places to start vaccines,” he said at the event on Tuesday. CNBC Healthy Returns online.
Walgreens is part of a federal pharmacy program that will ship doses directly to pharmacies this week. The drugstore chain plans to launch vaccines Friday in some of its stores in 15 states, along with Chicago and New York City. However, all of these pharmacies will get a limited supply and vaccines will only be available to Americans who consider it a high priority based on factors such as age or medical conditions.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration said it will also begin sending vaccines to community health centers next week, part of its strategy to reach low-income communities and low-income families who may not have a grocery store or a pharmacy nearby or may have other barriers to access, such as lack of transportation.
Approximately 43.2 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered nationwide as of Tuesday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 9.8 million people have received two doses of the shot. The two vaccines that currently have emergency authorization for use by the Food and Drug Administration (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines) require two doses.
Gates said he hopes a vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson could increase supply. The pharmaceutical company applied for FDA emergency authorization last week, after publishing data showing that its vaccine was about 66% effective in protecting against the virus. It is a unique vaccine and can be stored in the refrigerator for months.
“It’s good news for all of us that there will be more vaccines available,” he said.