CVS launching vaccine for long-term care facilities

(KYMA, KECY/CNN) - CVS is launching COVID-19 vaccinations across long-term care facilities in California.

The pharmacy chain says they have the capacity to immunize close to 700,000 residents and staff across more than 15,000 facilities in California.
Nationwide, CVS will immunize 40-million staff and residents onsite at long-term care facilities.

“The long-term care facilities had an opportunity either to use CVS Health or Walgreens. Or they could have opted out and used a state program,” CVS Health Bay Area regional director Joe Fiesel said. “We have actually worked on the logistics from a staffing perspective and we have that staffing covered entirely.”

They’ll begin vaccinating long-term care facilities in the state next week. But CVS already launched at long-term care facilities in other states a couple days ago.

“We’ll visit each site three different times,” Fiesel explained. “We’ll go there for the first dose, and then we’ll do a follow up about three weeks later if we are using the Pfizer vaccine. And then we’ll go one last time to make sure we didn’t miss anybody in that facility.”

CVS said this is a precursor to a larger rollout.

Eventually, COVID-19 vaccinations will be offered at pharmacy locations. They’re hoping to be available to the general public around March. It will start as appointment-only. Once things get to scale, CVS said they’ll be able to offer 25 to 50-million shots each month.

The vaccines are free of cost. Those recovering from COVID-19 need to wait until their isolation period ends, according to CDC criteria.

However, CVS said there are no specific restrictions on getting immunized if you’ve recovered from COVID-19. CVS explained generally reinfection is uncommon for about 90 days.