WBA Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc

By Anna Wilde Mathews and Tom McGinty 

A federal effort to administer Covid-19 vaccines to workers and residents in long-term care facilities began Friday in Connecticut, Florida and Ohio, with a broader rollout in a dozen states set to start Monday.

The program, which is being led by CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., faces challenges to get the shots to the approximately 15,600 nursing homes and 29,000 assisted-living communities in the U.S. These include getting the consent of staffers and residents, the complexities of storing and administering the Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE vaccine and concerns over ensuring that potential side effects from the shots don't sideline too many workers at once.

Under contracts with the federal government, CVS has signed up more than 40,000 long-term care facilities for vaccination, and Walgreens has around 35,000. Other pharmacies are also involved.

Covid-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes are surging. In the week ending Dec. 6, there were 4,525 deaths in nursing homes, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That was a 56% increase from the 2,893 deaths in the week ending Nov. 15.

The Dec. 6 figure was the highest weekly total since the start of the federal survey data in late May, barring one initial week of data that incorporated some earlier results.

Overall, more than 115,000 deaths have been linked to U.S. long-term care facilities, according to a Wall Street Journal tally.

Army Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's coronavirus-response program, said Wednesday that about 1,100 facilities around the country are set to begin vaccinations Monday. Facilities in West Virginia and two Florida counties received shots this week, as did staffers in a few other places around the U.S. In those cases, states decided to move in advance of the federal program's launch, and some nursing-home staffers were vaccinated through hospital systems.

CVS visited four nursing homes in Ohio and three in Connecticut on Friday. Walgreens said it visited seven facilities in Ohio, two in Connecticut and one in Florida Friday, vaccinating more than 500 residents and staff.

At the Reservoir Center, in West Hartford, Conn. Sophia Walker, a registered nurse, was one of the first staff members to get the shot Friday from a CVS pharmacist. Ms. Walker, who is Black, said she took the vaccine because she recognizes that some Black people are reluctant to take it because of a longstanding mistrust of health-care and government institutions, and she wants them to know that it is safe. "I know I'm setting a great example for the Black community," Ms. Walker said at a news conference.

Jeanne Peters, a 95-year-old Reservoir resident, also received the vaccine. She said she felt good afterward. "I'm delighted if people my age see me doing this, maybe they can decide to do it too," she said. Mrs. Peters was scheduled to check out of the facility and go home, but she still plans to get her follow-up shot in three weeks, she said.

Thirty-six of 38 residents and about half of approximately 100 staff agreed to receive the vaccine, according to Genesis HealthCare Inc., the parent of the Reservoir.

At the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky, Ohio, CVS employees began vaccinations at 10 a.m. Friday. The home has 392 veterans of conflicts from World War II to Desert Storm and a staff of about 550. Jeff Rapp, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Veterans Services, said vaccinations would continue through the weekend at the Sandusky facility and that he wasn't aware of many people unwilling to receive it.

"These are people that have had anthrax shots and all that, so it's really no big deal to most of them," he said.

CVS and Walgreens said late Friday that the rollout was going smoothly. Chris Cox, a CVS executive who is overseeing the rollout for the chain, said a "very high percentage of the residents and staff" at the initial facilities had agreed to vaccination. "Everything worked as designed," he said.

Although the East Coast snowstorm appeared set to delay one box of vaccination supplies destined for a nursing home in Connecticut, CVS was able to get the delivery expedited so it arrived in time.

Both companies said they would be vaccinating at facilities in a dozen states next week, with 11 starting Monday. The early states include New York, Nevada, Oklahoma and Kentucky. Walgreens said it had around 800 long-term care vaccine clinics scheduled for next week.

CVS said it received shipments from Pfizer at around 175 of its approximately 1,000 planned vaccine-distribution hubs this week. Walgreens, which will have around 800 hubs, has said it expects some shipments this week and some over the weekend.

After the vaccine arrives at hubs, teams of pharmacists and other staffers are fanning out to individual facilities to administer shots. The vaccine is kept in special coolers. Nursing-home staffers will generally get their shots in a central location, but residents can be visited in their rooms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told the nursing-home industry that eligibility isn't limited to workers involved directly in care, but also includes people who work in dietary services and other employees.

"We're going to learn a lot over the next couple of days," said Rick Gates, a senior vice president at Walgreens.

Before the pharmacy teams arrive at facilities, nursing homes are supposed to secure consent from residents and staffers, but nursing-home companies have said the process faces hurdles, both technical and due to reluctance among some staffers and families. For some residents, nursing homes must get the agreement of a family member.

Nursing-home operators said they were informed in recent days of visits scheduled in the coming weeks, and they are working to get the consents after CVS sent a new digital form this week that they could use to collect them. Some nursing-home executives have said the process has been confusing, but the digital form will help.

"There's a lot that needs to be figured out, worked out and implemented, " said Richard Feifer, chief medical officer of Genesis, which is the biggest U.S. nursing-home operator.

Dr. Feifer, who got vaccinated at the West Hartford facility as part of an effort to encourage staffers and residents to get the shots, said the entire preparation process has been "very accelerated, very stressful and challenging." But, he said, "we are absolutely going to find a way" to get everything ready in time.

Regarding consent forms, Mr. Cox said CVS was "really taking the feedback from all of the facilities, and made it a much easier process."

Some nursing homes have also said they want to stagger the doses administered to staff in case some suffer side effects. CVS and Walgreens are planning three visits to each facility, but both said they had some flexibility if a nursing home needed to stagger doses more than that.

--Joseph De Avila, Kris Maher and Jon Kamp contributed to this article.

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at anna.mathews@wsj.com and Tom McGinty at tom.mcginty@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 18, 2020 18:55 ET (23:55 GMT)

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