Some big U.S. pharmacies will not check ID before administering COVID-19 vaccines

 Many U.S. pharmacies, including those inside Kroger Co supermarkets and the drugstore chain of CVS Health Corp, say they will not be checking IDs before administering COVID-19 vaccines, leaving the door open to those who do not meet states’ guidelines to jump the line.

While the United States has distributed more than 30 million vaccine doses, a little over 11 million had been administered as of Thursday, a lag that prompted U.S. health secretary Alex Azar to call on states to begin vaccinating the vulnerable older population and those with certain chronic health conditions to get more vaccines into arms.

U.S. retailers face a choice of strictly enforcing state eligibility rules with on-site identity checks, or rely on an honor system that could allow people to ignore those guidelines but also get more people inoculated.

“State and local guidelines vary across the 40 public health jurisdictions we serve, but in most cases, identification will not be required to receive the vaccine,” a Kroger spokeswoman said. The biggest U.S. grocery chain has so far administered about 7,800 COVID-19 vaccines to healthcare workers and nursing home staff and residents.

Twenty-two states have moved toward using age as the main criteria for prioritizing inoculations, with four more set to follow next week. Others are adhering to strict guidelines meant to assure that scarce coronavirus vaccine supplies went first to healthcare workers, nursing home residents and first responders.

Teachers and other “essential workers” are supposed to be among those next in line as distribution widens, but who qualifies as an essential worker varies by state.

“We are not planning to ask for ID to receive a COVID-19 vaccination,” a CVS Health spokesman said. “These vaccinations will be appointment-only in our stores and patients will have already gone through an eligibility screening when they register for an appointment on our website, through our app or via a 1-800 number.”

However, the accuracy of information provided in eligibility screenings conducted by some companies is not automatically checked at the vaccination sites.

Walgreens Boots Alliance said it would follow state and local guidance on how to verify eligibility.

Hy-Vee, which operates grocery stores and pharmacies in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Wisconsin and other Midwestern states, said it has included its own warning on its website that ID may - or may not - be asked for prior to the shot being given. “So far, we have had no problems,” a spokeswoman said.

Stop & Shop Supermarket, located in the northeastern United States, said it would check IDs or pay stubs if instructed to do so by individual states. Publix Super Markets, which operates in Florida and other southeastern states, said people would need to provide “proof of insurance and/or their driver’s license or social security card.”

In Washington D.C., which relies on pharmacy chains Safeway and Giant Food to administer vaccines, it is unclear who verifies people’s healthcare worker status.

A district website allowing healthcare workers to register for a vaccine tells them they will be verified via their work ID badge or an employer letter during the pharmacy appointment.

But Giant Food in a statement said it was just checking the photo ID and insurance card of anyone who secured an appointment through the district’s website.

A spokeswoman for the DC health department said the vaccination team would raise the issue with Giant Food. Safeway parent Albertsons Companies Inc did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University’s medical school, attributed the lack of planning and diverging local guidance to chronic underfunding of the U.S. healthcare system, with the ongoing pandemic straining resources further.

Schaffner said the solution was to increase vaccine availability and hire more vaccinators.

“The more vaccines you have, the less you have to worry about prioritization,” Schaffner said. “We know it’s not going to be perfect, but who cares, we need to get them into the arms.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-retail/some-big-u-s-pharmacies-will-not-check-id-before-administering-covid-19-vaccines-idUSKBN29K15N

Nursing home residents face delays for COVID-19 vaccines despite extreme risk

 A former Arkansas health official is sounding alarms about the pace of coronavirus vaccines being administered to residents of long-term care facilities under a U.S. plan that puts major pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens in charge of many of the shots.

Fewer than 10% of doses allocated to those Arkansas seniors have been administered, according to the state health department. The two pharmacies are working with about 40% of the state’s facilities. Some of those were told that they were scheduled for February or March, said Dr. Joe Thompson, former Arkansas surgeon general and chief executive of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement

“This is not acceptable,” said Thompson. “We’re seeing a failure in deployment by CVS and Walgreens.”

Federal health officials in recent days have urged broadening vaccine eligibility to tens of millions of Americans to speed the national inoculation program rollout. Meanwhile, seniors at some long-term care facilities - who account for about 1% of the U.S. population but 40% of COVID-19 deaths and were supposed to be at the front of the line - continue to wait.

State and local officials and long-term care operators in states including Florida, California, Arizona, Indiana and Pennsylvania told Reuters they have turned to alternative providers for vaccinations for their residents or staff because the pharmacy chains were scheduling shots weeks out.

Some 75,000 long-term care facilities signed up to receive vaccines from CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Pharmacy Partnership Program.

“I think they face serious bandwidth issues in terms of scheduling,” said David Grabowski, a Harvard Medical School professor and healthcare policy expert. “I find it very distressing that we haven’t been doing this more rapidly. This is really a matter of life or death.”

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson in a statement on Thursday said the two pharmacy chains assured him that all long-term care residents assigned to them would be vaccinated by the end of this month.

Many states prioritized homes with patients requiring medical care, which contributed to delays at other long-term care facilities.

CVS said it plans to finish all shots at assigned facilities within nine to 12 weeks of the first dose. That means states like California, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, which were among the last to activate the second-phase of facility vaccinations, may not be finished until April.

“State decisions on which facilities are activated when have a significant impact on timing,” CVS spokesman T.J. Crawford said, noting that the company has administered 1 million shots and is on track with its federal agreement.

Others hurdles included confirming vaccine availability, the winter holidays, vaccine hesitancy and fresh COVID-19 outbreaks, the companies said.

That resulted in “a little bit slower start than what we were hoping for. Now that we’ve gotten past the first of the year, you’re seeing a quick and rapid acceleration,” said Rick Gates, Walgreens’ senior vice president of pharmacy and healthcare. The company has done more than 500,000 shots and expects to be done by March.

Meanwhile, central Florida’s Seminole County is deploying mobile clinics to some assisted living facilities.

“We went because they either have not been contacted by the private providers or they had concerns because of some type of issue,” said county emergency manager Alan Harris.

“CVS and Walgreens, I think, are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of long-term care facilities in Florida,” Harris said.

The state of Florida has hired health services firm CDR Maguire to take over vaccinations at about 1,900 assisted living facilities that CVS or Walgreens had scheduled on or after Jan. 24.

Los Angeles County opted out of the CVS-Walgreens partnership and is asking facilities that can to pick up and administer vaccine themselves. In Northern California’s Contra Costa County, nonprofit Choice in Aging joined John Muir Health and Kaiser Permanente in pitching in to help.

Choice in Aging is targeting facilities with six or fewer beds in historically underserved communities. “This is a population that is never prioritized,” said Choice in Aging CEO Debbie Toth.

The CDC on Thursday said 26% of the 4.7 million vaccine doses allocated for long-term care sites had been administered, lagging even the woeful 36% of the 30.6 million available nationwide.

West Virginia, which opted out of CDC Pharmacy Partnership, did extensive planning and tapped its existing network of long-term care pharmacies to quickly vaccinate nursing home residents in an all-hands-on-deck effort, said Dr. Michael Wasserman, former president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.

“Community pharmacies absolutely should be involved,” said American Pharmacists Association CEO Scott Knoer. “I wish they would have been from the get-go.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-nursingho/some-u-s-nursing-home-residents-face-delays-for-covid-19-vaccines-despite-extreme-risk-idUSKBN29K1EI

Applied DNA Updates on COVID-19 Diagnostics and Testing

 - Average Daily Testing in January 2021 to Date Up 158% Over December 2020, Driven Primarily by Scale Up in Testing Contracts -

- Company Increases Production of Assay Kits (Tests) and Sample Collection Kits to Meet Further Demand -

- Applied DNA Clinical Laboratories On Track to Request Re-Inspection for CLEP-CLIA Certification -

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005079/en/Applied-DNA-Provides-Business-Update-on-COVID-19-Diagnostics-and-Testing

Using heat to kill SARS‐CoV‐2

 John P. Abraham, 1 Brian D. Plourde, 1 and Lijing Cheng 2

doi: 10.1002/rmv.2115 [Epub ahead of print]

PDF: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361064/pdf/RMV-9999-e2115.pdf

Summary

The current coronavirus pandemic has reached global proportions and requires unparalleled collective and individual efforts to slow its spread. One critically important issue is the proper sterilization of physical objects that have been contaminated by the virus. Here, we review the currently existing literature on thermal inactivation of coronavirus (SARS‐CoV‐2) and present preliminary guideless on temperatures and exposure durations required to sterilize. We also compare these temperatures/exposure durations with potential household appliances that may be thought capable of performing sterilization.

1.2. Recommendations for thermally destroying coronavirus

We provide a reasonable estimate for near complete thermal destruction of coronavirus. For temperatures above 65°C (149°F) is expected to cause near complete inactivation with exposures greater than 3 minutes. For temperatures between 55 and 60°C (131‐140°F) heating should last 5 minutes or more. However, for temperatures in the range 50‐55°C (122‐131°F) we recommend 20 minutes or longer of exposure. At these levels, we expect the viral concentration to be lowered by log 5‐7, near or below the detectable limit.

Because of the seriousness of the current coronavirus infection, we suggest a reasonable safety factor can be obtained by increasing the above‐listed temperatures by 10°C (about 18 °F). Extensive research has confirmed that at least for living cells, the sensitivity of thermal destruction is very strongly linked to temperature. That is, small increases in temperature cause large increases in the death rate. As an example, for mammalian cells and other pathogens (bacteria, viruses, and protozoa) the death rate rises rapidly as temperature increases. 7 , 8 Another reason for using a safety factor is that the temperatures experienced by the virus during heating will not necessarily equal the temperature of the applied heat. Thermal inertia causes a heating lag that depends, in part, on the media being heated.

With this conservative approach, the following become the recommendations:

In order to kill COVID‐19, heat virus‐containing objects for:

• 3 minutes at temperature above 75°C (160°F).

• 5 minutes for temperatures above 65°C (149°F).

• 20 minutes for temperatures above 60°C (140°F).

It should be noted that these findings agree with WHO guidelines which report a 4 log reduction of coronavirus for 56°C (133°F) with 15‐minute exposures 14 and is consistent with information for killing other infectious agents. 15

These recommendations are hotter than encountered in residential clothes dryers, clothes washing machines, and dish washers. For these appliances, temperatures are typically at or below 57°C (135°F). These temperatures are also much hotter than residential hot water (in the United States), for example, plumbing codes limit hot water to 49°C (120°F).

Of course, since soap has some virucide characteristics, washing with soap is expected to inactivate viruses by nonthermal means.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7361064/

NY state: No more Covid-19 vaccination appointments until April

 New York state announced today that all Covid-19 vaccine appointments at state-run sites are full through mid-April.

In black all caps against a bright red box on its website, the state Department of Health said: “CURRENTLY APPOINTMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE FOR THE NEXT 14 WEEKS.” The site notes that over 7 million New Yorkers are now eligible for the vaccines, and the state is getting just 300,000 vaccines a week.

At the New York State Fairgrounds vaccination site, the next available appointment is April 14. There were no appointments at any of the other four state sites now open: the Javits Center in New York City, Jones Beach field in Wantagh, Westchester County Center and University at Albany. The state plans to open 15 more sites.

The health department notes that the vaccines are also being given by pharmacies and county health departments. You’re unlikely to get spots at those, though. Kinney Drugs filled all 7,500 slots across the state in five hours; the chain’s website now says all appointments are booked and begs people “NOT to call your local store.”

Onondaga County’s website warns: “Due to high demand there are currently no appointments available for this week. Please check frequently as cancellations occur.”

The vaccines were initially available in December to high-risk hospital workers, then expanded to doctors offices and other non-hospital professionals who saw patients. The universe of people eligible for the shots expanded greatly this week, as the state added anybody over 65 and a variety of professions, including teaching and law enforcement.

Each vaccine requires two doses, either 21 or 28 days apart. Rich Azzopardi, senior advisor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said today that at “state-run sites (you) make your second appointment before you leave the first one.”

https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2021/01/ny-state-no-more-covid-19-vaccination-appointments-until-april.html

CVS eyes hiring thousands for pharmacy Covid vaccine rollout in stores

 Hiring for thousands of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians is underway at CVS Health, as the drugstore chain prepares for the official greenlight from health authorities to begin administering the Covid-19 vaccine in pharmacy locations across the country.

Increased staffing efforts come at a time when the national vaccine rollout has fallen far short of initial goals. Across the country, more than 9.3 million vaccine doses have been administered, out of a total 27.6 million doses distributed, according to Wednesday data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For its part, CVS Health says it is on track to administer Covid vaccines in more than 40,000 long-term care facilities nationwide — including first doses in 8,000 nursing facilities by Jan. 25 and first doses in 31,000 assisted living facilities in the next month — based on a federal partnership agreement.

Ahead of a national rollout to the general public, the company’s career page lists openings for roughly 11,300 pharmacy technicians and 1,200 pharmacists across the U.S. To fill those roles, applicants will complete a pre-employment assessment with the platform Modern Hire, which has worked with the pharmacy chain since 2006 to hire store associates, including retail staff and managers. Mike Hudy, chief science officer at Modern Hire, tells CNBC Make It the company helped CVS bring on more than 60,000 new hires at the beginning of the pandemic to serve as an essential business.

Today, Hudy says Modern Hire is helping CVS process upwards of 2,700 candidate assessments per day through the platform, including for pharmacists and pharmacy technician roles. Through its “virtual job tryout,” applicants walk though a day-on-the-job simulation of what to expect in the role, like interacting with customers and administering accurate prescription dosages. Employers, meanwhile, can quickly asses the candidate’s ability to complete certain tasks and gauge their performance in the pharmacy environment. Hudy says approaching the hiring process in this way, through both a simulation and crunching data around the applicant’s ability to complete tasks, can close the time to hire from several weeks to a matter of days.

CVS is offering full- and part-time pharmacy technician roles, which serve as the first point of contact for customers and are expected to work compassionately, quickly and safely to protect patient privacy and security. The role can be physically demanding: Expect to be standing or walking for extended periods of time, complete repetitive administrative tasks that require acute attention to detail, work with small instruments, communicate effectively and concentrate on a task for significant periods of time. Applicants must be at least 16 years old, licensed based on their state’s requirements and have a high school diploma or equivalent. The median annual pay for pharmacy technicians is $33,950 a year, according to the Labor Department.

Staff pharmacists support the pharmacy manager and lead technician support staff in daily operations, including patient safety, pharmacy professional practice, quality assurance, customer service, inventory management and workflow management. Pharmacists generally earn a doctorate of pharmacy degree and must have an active license in the state where they work. Pharmacists earned a median $128,090 in 2019, per the Labor Department.

Preparing to administer 20 to 25 million shots per month

In early December, CVS Health broadened its recruitment efforts by sending a mass email to customers that it was “urgently hiring thousands of qualified pharmacists, nurses and pharmacy technicians to help administer Covid-19 vaccines when available to pharmacies,” Forbes reports. Pharmacies including CVS Health, Walgreens and smaller retail chains and grocers are offering signing bonuses and reaching out to recently laid-off and retired pharmacists and health-care workers to meet the forthcoming wave of vaccine needs, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In a request for comment about the company’s hiring efforts, a spokesperson for CVS Health, which employs 34,000 pharmacists and 65,000 technicians, pointed to the company exceeding its hiring goal announced in October to fill 15,000 new, part-time and temporary pharmacists and pharmacist technicians to respond to customer needs during the fall and winter, when cases of Covid-19 and the flu were expected to increase.

As for the weeks and months ahead, “we have the appropriate staff in place to support our vaccine efforts, and will continue to hire as appropriate as has been the case since the start of the pandemic,” the spokesperson said.

In addition to ongoing efforts with long-term care facilities, CVS said in a Jan. 6 statement that Covid vaccines will eventually be available at all CVS Pharmacy locations throughout the country, subject to availability and prioritization of populations as determined by each state. While no vaccines are currently available at CVS Pharmacy locations, “the company is in discussions with several states to make a limited number of doses available in the coming weeks in advance of the broader rollout” in retail locations, per the statement.

When vaccines become available to the general public, the company says it has the capacity to administer 20 to 25 million shots per month across nearly 10,000 pharmacy locations.

At that time, vaccines will be administered by appointment only, which can be made at CVS.com, through the CVS Pharmacy app or at a dedicated 800 number for those who don’t have online access.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/cvs-health-hiring-pharmacists-techs-to-administer-covid-vaccine.html

Instacart Becomes Second Company To Pay Workers To Get COVID Vaccine

 Dollar General made headlines as the first retail chain to pay employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine. It will compensate workers with four hours of pay.

The grocery delivery service, Instacart, has become the second major company to do so.

It will pay workers $25 to get the vaccine.

The program begins February 1st for its 50,000 workers.

‘With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise across the country, we’re taking proactive steps to advocate that government agencies recognize Instacart shoppers as critical essential workers who deserve early access to vaccines,’ said Instacart CEO and founder Apoorva Mehta in a statement.

“Our goal with the introduction of our new Vaccine Support Stipend is to ensure that, when the time comes, Instacart shoppers don’t have to choose between earning income as an essential service provider or getting vaccinated,” he continued.

https://labor411.org/411-blog/instacart-becomes-second-company-to-pay-workers-to-get-covid-vaccine/