CVS Health is set to distribute vaccines to vulnerable populations within 24 to 48 hours upon receiving its stocks.
Larry Merlo, the company's chief executive, is prepared to administer “vaccines into the arms of some of our most vulnerable populations."
“We’re ready to go. We’re in great shape and as I mentioned, people are excited to be an important part of this solution,” Merlo said Thursday in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that health-care workers and residents and staff at long-term care facilities must be prioritized for the Covid-19 vaccines.
Merlo explained that the company's 10,000 health care professionals will distribute vaccines in nursing homes and assisted living centers. He added that the company “has been hiring individuals since this pandemic began” to assist with coronavirys testing. Moreover, he said it is experienced with giving seasonal flu shots at long-term care facilities.
“Pending approval, I’m confident that we’ll be in thousands of facilities before the Christmas holiday,” he said.
The U.S. government set a deal in October with CVS Health and Walgreens to distribute the Covid-19 vaccinations to residents and staff at long-term care facilities throughout the country. The vaccines have no fee and will be sent to on-site clinics at each location, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
CVS Health was selected by 40,000 long-term care facilities across the U.S. to distribute vaccines at their long-term care facilities. About 30,000 skilled nursing and assisted living facilities have picked Walgreens as their vaccine provider.
CVS Health and Walgreens have ensured they have enough staff to go to the centers and make the process efficient.
Merlo noted the company has recruited pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy interns from pharmacy schools. He added it also hired health-care professionals who are retired but are still licensed to work part-time.
The refrigerators and freezers of CVS pharmacies can store five of the six vaccine candidates at the proper temperature. He pointed out that only one of the six vaccine candidates will need a special kind of storage.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts that more than 70% of people in developed countries will be vaccinated against the virus by fall 2021.
Goldman Economists Daan Struyven and Sid Bhushan presented a coronavirus vaccine distribution timeline using a combination of supply estimates and demand based on consumer survey data.
They gathered data from leading Covid-19 vaccine developers Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Novavax.
The economists predicted that the initial doses of Covid-19 vaccines would be given to the most high-risk groups of people in the U.S. from mid-December onwards.
Vaccine approval and rollout could result in “significant public health benefits” from the initial quarter of next year, the economists noted, with half of the population of the U.S. and Canada likely to be vaccinated in April.
Moderna announced that it will request emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after it was found 94% effective in preventing Covid-19.
Meanwhile, half of the U.K.’s population will be vaccinated in March, according to economists. They believe that the European Union, Japan, and Australia would achieve this level of immunization in May.
“This scenario shows slower vaccinations in Europe, which is more reliant on these (AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) developers, but also less medium-run vaccinations elsewhere owing to weaker demand, which appears most fragile in the US and Japan,” they wrote.
Goldman’s baseline prediction is that massive immunization against the coronavirus would “drive a pickup in global growth” beginning in the second quarter of next year.
