* WBEZ…

Four weeks into COVID-19 vaccinations at Illinois nursing homes, nearly 80% of the doses for the campaign are waiting for use, but the pharmacy chains performing the work say everything is going according to plan.

CVS Health and Walgreens have administered only 110,403 of the 550,050 doses that Illinois has received for residents and staff members of long-term care facilities, according to state public-health data posted Monday. […]

“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. […]

“You have a captive population in these facilities,” said [Dr. Ronald Hershow, who directs epidemiology and biostatistics in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health], who serves on a team advising IDPH on its COVID-19 responses. “It doesn’t seem like it should be as logistically difficult as [vaccinating] the general population.” […]

“Our effort to administer COVID-19 vaccine to the long-term care community in Illinois is going according to plan and in close coordination with the state,” the CVS statement said.

The feds set up this public-private partnership program without apparently making sure that Walgreens and CVS had the capability to actually fulfill their duties (typical DC during this entire farce). The state mandated that the pharmacy companies vaccinate residents/staff of skilled nursing home residents first because that’s where the greatest fatality rates are. The effort started a month ago. The pharmacy chains finally finished the first round in those skilled nursing home facilities only yesterday, according to the governor’s office. And there’s a whole lot more to go, as is evidenced by the fact that only a fifth of available doses have been administered. For them to say that things are going as planned is simply ludicrous. Nobody planned on this unconscionable delay.

The pharmacies have been so slow, in fact, that the state decided to vaccinate residents of state veterans’ homes and some DHS facilities itself rather than wait on Walgreens and CVS.

If you can’t handle the task, ask for help, for crying out loud. And stop pointing fingers and obfuscating the issue. The problem lies with y’all. Get on it.

The feds either need to immediately step in and revisit these contracts or make sure the companies get the help they need.

Ridiculous.

…Adding… Florida…

After nearly three weeks of vaccinating residents and staff at Florida long-term care facilities, CVS and Walgreens will no longer be part of those inoculations, according to an update from the state Agency for Health Care Administration.

There are more than 321,000 residents and staff at those facilities across Florida, according to the AHCA. In late December, CVS and Walgreens pharmacies were selected by the federal government to help vaccinate these vulnerable populations. However, beginning Jan. 23 vaccinations at LTCs were taken over by a state-run program.