![]() But both companies said their hiring was sufficient. Neither CVS nor Walgreens answered how many employees are assigned to the vaccinations in Illinois long-term care sites. JB Pritzker’s administration and the pharmacies, meantime, are blaming each other for the slow pace of nursing-home vaccinations.Ī statement from IDPH spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said the vaccine doses “are available to the pharmacy partners as soon as their staff schedules visits” to the nursing homes.Īrnold also tied the vaccination pace to CVS and Walgreens hiring: “Pharmacy partners are working to increase their staffing so that available doses can be administered more quickly.” Vaccination delays are particularly dangerous as a more contagious strain of the virus pops up across the United States, Hershow said. As in the past, those fatalities made up about half of the state’s total coronavirus deaths during the week. ![]() Their residents accounted for 1,705 coronavirus infections and 277 deaths recorded by IDPH during the week that ended Friday. ![]() Illinois nursing homes continue to play an outsize role in the COVID-19 crisis. “It doesn’t seem like it should be as logistically difficult as the general population.”ĬVS and Walgreens are showing they “don’t have the capacity to move quicker,” said Shaba Andrich, vice president of a Service Employees International Union branch that represents workers at nearly 150 long-term care sites in Illinois, mostly skilled-nursing facilities. “You have a captive population in these facilities,” said Hershow, who serves on a team advising IDPH on its COVID-19 responses. ![]() Ronald Hershow, who directs epidemiology and biostatistics in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health. Vaccinating that group should not be such a heavy lift, said Dr. Monday’s Illinois Department of Public Health posting, however, shows the pharmacy chains have used just 20.1% of the doses allocated for nursing-home residents and staffers - an allocation that falls far short of the doses needed to give two shots to each of the estimated 360,000 Illinoisans who could qualify. The state announced on Friday it expects CVS and Walgreens to have visited all sites to provide at least their first doses by Feb. They visit a third time for anyone who missed an earlier shot. The companies give second injections three to four weeks after the first shots. Under the plan, the pharmacies prioritize skilled-nursing facilities, then assisted-living and other congregate homes. ![]() Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last fall contracted with CVS and Walgreens to inoculate people with ties to long-term care across the country. “The distribution of the vaccines to long-term care settings, where the most vulnerable population resides, is not fast enough and it must, must improve,” said Karen Messer, head of LeadingAge Illinois, which lobbies for 380 congregate-care sites, mostly nonprofits. “Walgreens has remained on track to immunize our most vulnerable populations,” wrote Phil Caruso, a spokesman of the Deerfield-based company.Ī CVS statement said company teams are “efficiently and methodically transporting vaccines to long-term care facilities and getting them in the arms of seniors” and that the injections “are increasing daily at an impressive rate.”Īs the pharmacy giants tout their performance, industry officials and public-health leaders are voicing alarm. ![]()
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