Can Drugstores Save Us?

happened in virus news today. President Joe Biden warned the nation to prepare for its darkest days in the year long pandemic. The President said today that as many as one hundred thousand more Americans will likely die over the next month as he overhauls the federal coronavirus response and presses Congress for more aid. Biden spent the day sinning executive actions to boost food assistance and provide other relief

for millions who are suffering financially. But his vow to reopen most US schools in his first one days could reignite clashes over how to safely return when many teachers haven't received the vaccine. In the United Kingdom, the coronavirus pandemic may no longer be spreading exponentially. That's according to government data, and suggests the country's third lockdown is working still. The government said the case rates remain dangerously high and

urged the public to keep to lockdown rules. Finally, despite a scare from Norway, the World Health Organization said it sees no evidence that the Fiser vaccine contributed to the deaths of elderly people in the country. The w h

O urged that the shot still be used. In a statement, the w h O Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety said that reports of deaths are in line with what is expected among quote frail elderly individuals end quote, and that the risk benefit balance of the vaccine still falls

in favor of administering it to the elderly. And now, for today's main story, vaccines from Fiser, MODERNA and others will have the power to one day and the pandemic, or at least to tame it, but only after seventy or more of the world's population gets inoculated against COVID nineteen. So far, the rollout has been anything but smooth. Big drug stores say they're ready to come to the rescue.

I spoke to reporters Robert Langrith and Angelica Levito about the potentially massive vaccine infrastructure that the neighborhood pharmacy could provide. The US vaccine rollout has gotten off too. I think it's fair to say a slow start. Um. Now, football stadiums, even Disneyland have been turned into vaccination sites. But I'm wondering what role does the corner drug store, like say CBS or Walgreens, what role does it have in getting

America's vaccine plan back on track. Yeah, so, basically because the initial vaccination campaign has gotten off to a slow start UH and sluggish startings behind the schedule of what we need where we need to need it to be. We need more vaccination sites, just as many as possible.

And what the corner drug store offers, including big places like CVS and Walgreens, drug stores at grocery stores and big box stores like Walmart, as well as true men, mom and pop independent chains, what those offer are lots and lots of locations are just everywhere. CVS has thousand locations, Wall Beans is over at nine thousand alone, and there's a total of forty UH chain drugsters in the US and another twenty thousand or so mom and pop one.

So what these offer are places where all sorts of people around the country can get vaccines and just more places, more outlets to get vaccines. And they're ready and willing to go and this could start happening as soon as February. And so let's let's break into some of their preparations. I mean, what have the big chains, you know, you mentioned CVS and Walgreens, UM, what have they been doing

to prepare for their role in the vaccination plan. So, pharmacies really first started their vaccination efforts about ten years ago when they were involved with the H one and one rollout, back when we were in a similar situation trying to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible. And in the ten years since, they have really invested a lot of time in their efforts. So they've been trying to boot their I T systems and just their workflow.

And so now they're plugging that in UM into this current effort and they are tweaking it for COVID specifically, because this is a little unique in that we're trying to vaccinate people really quickly, but you don't want to have hundreds of people lined up in your drug store. So this past flu season they tinkered with their schedules and had people actually make appointments ahead of time so that you could space people out and make sure you didn't have you know, two people all coming in at

once for their flu shot. And so they'll use that same system now to get ready, have people come in UM one by one and try to space people out. They're also, of course trying to teach people about the specific vaccines. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and so UM just trying to get out ahead of that. They Change They say that in theory they're capable of doing thirty million patients a month giving vaccines at their locations.

And there are some estimates that if you can buy all the change stores together, all the different change and grocery store chains, that theoretically they could give up to a hundred million doses a month, which would well exceed Biden's target of a hundred million doses in a hundred days. Now, what chains like CVS and Walgreens are doing to prepare, you know, first of all other training lots of pharmacy technicians uh in giving the shots. CVS I think has

trained twelve thousand pharmacy technicians and counting. They're hiring new people to help with the COVID nineteen response, you know, both for testing and for now for vaccines, and they're preparing like places for it to be done. Lots of Walgreens and CVS outlets already have exam rooms. CVS is ave stores with minute clinics in them, which are little clinics,

there's exam rooms there. And in other places they're taking advantage of things like old unused photo labs, the dressing rooms that are not being used now in target stores where CBS operates, the pharmacies, they're they're taking advantage of as many places they can two administrative vaccines and just gearing up for what's likely to be a very big rollout. Now.

As far as as the rollout and in particular the timeline for this, I mean, when really were drug stores anticipating to come to the four as it were in in the vaccine rollout program within the US, I mean, has there been any change to when they're expecting to really start becoming um almost say, the front line for distributing vaccines to Americans. So the pharmacies were scheduled to start vaccinating people once we got into phase two, which

is really when the general public can start getting vaccinated. However, we're quickly seeing that change. We've only been vaccinating people for a month, and already you have a number of states um like Louisiana, for example, that they early in January started turning to drug stores to help them because they want to get in the communities. They're tapping independence and chains because the independence tend to be in more rural areas and can reach broader swaths of the population.

And now President Fighting is saying that they want to get pharmacies involved in the next few weeks. And will that be Will that mean that every single pharmacy in America suddenly has vaccines available? No, of course not. We don't have that many yet. But we are seeing this acceleration because there has been um such a problem getting shots into arms, and pharmacies offer another way to get

into the community and meet people where they are. A lot of news has been around the difficulty in transporting and storing some of these vaccines. Does this impact the drug stores at all in terms of their need to have some of these facilities, say the very cold freezers and whatnot in order to be able to to store

these vaccines. I actually talked to CVS about this and they said that it's the Fiser vaccine that needs the super alto cold storage, and Fiser has designed special dry ice containers that can keep in storage, you know, for a number of we and CVS and said that in their work on distributing the vaccine to nursing homes that they've been able to so far successful use these dry ice containers that Fiser has and that that hasn't been

a problem. So they are not anticipating that the super could storage requirements needed in particular for the Fiser vaccine is going to be a massive problem. They think they

can handle that. And one other thing I wanted to mention was that, you know, just because the big pharmacy change are expressing a great confidence, you know, we shouldn't necessarily expect miracles for them from them, or you know, think that this is going to somehow obviate the need for big mass of vaccination sites and vaccination sites and stadiums and gymnasiums and community centers. We all still definitely

need those. And the Big Change CVS and Walgrains, they were to have a primary contract to help distribute in many states to nursing homes, and they face a criticize criticism from some local officials on your why that hasn't gone faster. So, you know, we shouldn't expect just because they say they're prepared, that that it will produce some miraculous turnaround. It's just that, you know, every of additional capacity will help, and pharmacies and a lot of capacity.

Over the weekend, I walked into a CBS store and it was interesting seeing in real life um sort of the difference because when you talk to the pharmacy executives, they say that they have these wonderful systems to keep people sticking to the schedule and only there when they're supposed to be there. But when you walk in in the vestibule, there were probably ten different signs saying that this particular location did not have the COVID nineteen vaccine.

So you have to wonder what will happen when word gets out that that location does have the vaccine, and can you really manage expectations. You know, there's also the question of financial motivation. What is the incentive for these big chains or even the mom and pop stores to be involved with the vaccination rollout, So pharmacies and other places that provide provide the vaccine, you know, do have an incentive for getting it out there to as many

people as possible. While there is no payment for the vaccine itself, providers administrantor you know, we'll get paid for the administration of the vaccine, and the federal medical program that covers the older people is paying about seventeen dollars to the first dose and a little over twenty eight dollars to the second dose. Also, there's definitely in financial incentive for pharmacies to push through as many people as possible.

And the good news is that there's a financial centers that make sure that people all got the second dose because they're paid more for the second dose. And one thing too, that um that has come up. So CBS of course has been investing very heavily in expanding its testing capabilities and one things that one thing that executives talk about when they, you know, address how that has performed, is that they're finding that they're reaching many more people

than usual. So of course they're testing people and they're doing a public health service, but they're also benefiting because they're getting people that have never walked into a CBS, or maybe they have it in five or so years, and now suddenly they're attached to the system. They know that CBS is there and they might think of them for future health services. That was Robert Langreth and Angelica Levito,

and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Robert Langrath

and Angelica Levito. Original music by Leo Citrian. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Leave. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.