US pharmacies, grocery stores to receive a million doses of COVID-19 vaccine next week
ATLANTA - It could soon be easier for millions of Americans to find the COVID-19 vaccine closer to home.
Starting February 11, 2021, the U.S. Government will begin delivering a million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to about 6,500 drugstores and grocery stores nationwide.
President Joe Biden's COVID-19 advisors have warned the initial rollout to pharmacies will be slow and finding vaccine will continue to be difficult for many Americans.
The goal, they say, is to make it easier for Americans to get vaccinated in their communities.
It is a move Dr. Amber Schmidtke, a microbiologist who publishes a online newsletter about the pandemic in Georgia, says makes sense.
"I think, in many ways, this looks like how the flu vaccine distribution works each year, by sending it directly to the pharmacies and sort of bypassing the health systems of each state," Schmidtke says. "We can see that the public health departments have really been overwhelmed by a lot of this right now."
Jeanne Peters, 95, a rehab patient at The Reservoir, a nursing facility, was given the first COVID-19 vaccination in a Ct. nursing home Friday, Dec. 18, 2020, in West Hartford, Conn. Administering the vaccine is Mary Lou Galushko, a CVS pharmacist fo
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Schmidtke says many of the drugstore and grocery chains have the trained staff and technical resources to schedule and vaccinated large numbers of people.
The challenge will be finding enough vaccine to supply the demand.
Touring a vaccination clinic Thursday at a Kroger store in Brookhaven, just north of Atlanta, Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters the state will do whatever it takes to expand its vaccinations, but they need more doses.
"We are moving ahead full bore, to prepare for the day we get more supply," Kemp says. "So, when that comes, you know, initially we can get that to the sites that have the ability to scale up, and we can set up state sites, or we can do both. Whatever it is that we need to do, we're going to use the full power of the state government to do that."
The US pharmacy rollout will eventually include up to 40,000 stores, including CVS, Walgreens, Publix, Walmart, Rite Aid and Kroger stores.
The good news is, a lot of people are already familiar with getting their vaccines through these environments," Amber Schmidtke says. "So, hopefully, this will make it more convenient. I still worry we're not quite hitting the last mile, though, of reaching our home-bound elderly, or some of those who don't have the bandwidth or capabilities to be on the phone or be online for hours to make an appointment."
Schmidtke says she would like to see state and local health departments teaming up with non-profits like Meals on Wheels to go door-to-door and vaccinate those who are unable to reach vaccination sites.
President Biden's COVID-19 advisors say the CDC will work with pharmacy chains to reach medically underserved and harder-to-reach communities, to vaccinate those at higher risk of suffering severe complications of COVID-19.
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