| A miscalculation by the U.S. government is turning into a boon for states seeking to boost their supply of vaccine doses. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tapped pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS to vaccinate residents and employees of long-term care facilities. Supplies were based on number of beds multiplied by two, a simple way to estimate how many residents and staff were inside each facility. But those numbers turned out to be way off, and now thousands of extra doses are being released. Thirty-two states and cities are transferring extra shots from the federal program, the CDC said this week. "What we need for the program is definitely going to be less than what they anticipated," said Rina Shah, vice president of pharmacy operations at Walgreens.  A CVS pharmacist prepares to administer doses of the Moderna vaccine at the Covenant Place assisted-living facility in Sumter, South Carolina. Photographer: Micah Green/Bloomberg Occupancy in senior housing is currently at record lows, meaning a chunk of beds are empty. And only a fraction of workers chose to get vaccinated in the early weeks of the program, according to new data from the CDC. A CDC spokeswoman said the agency wanted to avoid any interruptions or delays because of supply issues at the outset. Now, almost two months into the program, states are asking for their shots back. Most of those doses are on paper rather than in freezers, the pharmacies say, making the process of shifting supply around relatively easy. Like almost every angle of the U.S. vaccination campaign, states are taking different strategies on what to do with the leftovers. Illinois, for example, will take 97,000 doses and administer them in CVS and Walgreens stores throughout the state. Idaho transferred about 12,600 doses, enough to fully vaccinate 6,300 people, from CVS to other providers in the state's seven public-health districts. Nevada and Arizona used some of Walgreens's extra doses for mass-vaccination clinics, Shah said. Some states are simply suspending fresh allocations to the pharmacies, said Chris Cox, CVS's senior vice president for pharmacy. For states, tracking down those doses and finding new ways to use them are just the latest headache in a program that's gotten mixed feedback. In a lot of ways, the initiative eased the burden on states, says Sarah Leeds, Idaho's immunization program manager. But that's been somewhat offset by having to go back, examine the data and figure out what to do next.—Angelica LaVito | 
Sitaram Panchal died of cancer at 54 New Delhi: After Inder Kumar’s sudden death, Bollywood industry got another shock this mornin...
Post a Comment