West Virginia took a contrarian approach to rolling out its COVID-19 vaccination program. Eschewing the national plan and national pharmacy chains, Gov. Jim Justice instead went local. He turned to community pharmacies to inoculate seniors in nursing homes and assisted living centers and called on them to vaccinate their friends, neighbors, and those in nearby towns.
His idea worked, brilliantly. The state leads the country by nearly all measures. More than 6% of the state has received both shots recommended for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. At 12%, West Virginia trails only Alaska in the percentage of residents who have received at least one dose. No one is leaving doses sitting on shelves in the Mountain State, either. Fully 88% of doses delivered have already gone into arms, the highest in the country, according to the CDC.
Gov. Justice’s decision to opt out of a federal program to vaccinate people in long-term care facilities got West Virginia off to a quick start and put the state government in charge of the vaccine rollout. While the federal government contracted with CVS and Walgreens, West Virginia matched local pharmacies with the state’s approximately 200 nursing homes—and finished distributing first doses to the most vulnerable seniors in December, just as most states were really getting started. By the third week of January, pharmacists had administered both doses to residents and staff at all of the state’s long-term care centers.
With many other states still struggling to vaccinate the elderly, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists urged other governors to follow Gov. Justice’s example. “Independent long-term care pharmacists have the experience, specialized knowledge, and, most importantly, the relationships to bring the vaccine to the people who need it most,” said Chad Worz, PharmD, BCGP, and chief executive of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, whose members specialize in long-term care.
The decision to partner with community pharmacies made great sense in West Virginia. Most people live more than 45 minutes away from an outlet for either of the pharmacy giants but much closer to an independent pharmacy. Minimal paperwork made signing up for the program easy, as did the locally owned structure of most pharmacies, which meant that there was no chain of command for approval to participate in vaccinations.
So far, 250 community pharmacies have set up clinics, started immunizations, and provide reassurance to neighbors hesitant to get the vaccine.
Perhaps heeding the success in West Virginia, the Biden Administration announced that it would begin shipping about one million doses directly to community pharmacies this week to reach more socially vulnerable communities and address equity issues in the distribution of vaccines. Initially, 6,500 pharmacies will receive the vaccines with that number expected to scale up 40,000 over time..
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