Pritzker last week said he’s received assurances from Walgreens and CVS that the pharmacies will make their first visits to all assisted living facilities in Illinois by Feb. CVS has visited 8% (40) of the 516 assisted living facilities it’s partnered with in Illinois since Monday. 25 official activation date, Walgreens said it was able to begin vaccinations at Illinois assisted living facilities in mid-January “based on further direction from the Illinois Department of Public Health and CDC,” according to spokeswoman Kelli Teno, as the pharmacy was able to “pull forward vaccinations in these facilities.”Īs a result, Walgreens has made first visits to 50% of Illinois assisted living facilities. Walgreens does not give a percentage for skilled nursing facilities, but says that out of the 269 nursing homes they’re partnered with, they have 102 additional clinics scheduled for the next seven days.ĭespite the Jan. According to CVS data, 49% of the nursing homes CVS has partnered with in Illinois have also received their second dose visits, which is about average among states, whose second visit status ranges widely. In order to achieve full vaccination status in nursing homes, the pharmacies must travel to long-term care facilities three separate times in order to make sure all residents and staff get the chance to receive both the initial and booster shots.ĬVS and Walgreens have already made it through their first round of vaccinations in all Illinois skilled nursing facilities. “If they could have made it through the (skilled nursing facilities) sooner, they could begin vaccination clinics at other (long-term care) facilities sooner,” the spokeswoman is quoted as saying.īoth vaccines currently on the market require two doses three or four weeks apart. Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh maintained the pharmacies were in charge of the scheduling, and an Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman told the Chicago Tribune last week also said it was Walgreens and CVS who set the timing. Walgreens and CVS' daily spreadsheets also stipulate the activation dates were chosen by states in plans submitted to the Centers for Disease Control before the program began. “As made clear by regularly updated data CVS Health makes publicly available, most states chose activation dates for assisted living and other facilities – meaning, when CVS Pharmacy teams could first visit – well into January,” CVS said in a defensive press release Tuesday. Other states staggered their activation dates for assisted living facilities through January.īut the Pritzker administration and CVS disagree on which entity set that late activation date. 25 - the latest in the nation.Īccording to CVS and Walgreens data, 17 other states, the District of Columbia and the city of Chicago had activation dates for their assisted living facilities concurrent with their activation dates in late December. But only Illinois, Wisconsin and the city of Philadelphia had “activation” dates for the vaccination program in its assisted living facilities on Jan. The CVS/Walgreens vaccination program began at Illinois skilled nursing facilities on Dec. Long-term care facilities are split into two broad categories: skilled nursing facilities and assisted living facilities. The governor made similar comments on Friday, saying he was “very troubled” by the program’s slow pace, and admonished the companies to “accelerate the pace of vaccines to our most vulnerable residents.”īut CVS is pushing back on Pritzker’s comments, claiming it was the state that made the choice to not “activate” the vaccination programs in half of its long-term care facilities until Monday of this week, thus slowing its own program. “All the vaccinations that are necessary for that entire group have been taken out already of our allotment and they sit on shelves because that federal pharmacy partnership is so slow at the job.” “That program has gone exceedingly slow,” Pritzker said Monday. The companies last fall entered into a federal partnership under the Trump administration aimed at administering vaccines to long-term care facilities beginning in late December.īut last week and this week, Pritzker joined a chorus of governors bemoaning both the program’s slowness and alleging it has trapped viable vaccine doses in the process. JB Pritzker has recently taken to criticizing a slower-than-anticipated COVID-19 vaccination effort at Illinois’ long-term care facilities by pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens.
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