Walgreens Not Following U.S. Guidance on Pfizer Vaccine Spacing
After complaints from customers and the C.D.C., the pharmacy chain will start scheduling doses three weeks apart.
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Walgreens has inoculated hundreds of thousands of Americans against Covid-19 this year using the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. But the pharmacy chain has not been following guidance from federal health officials about the timing of
[FONT="]second doses.[/FONT] People are supposed to get two doses, three weeks apart. Walgreens, however, separated them by four weeks because that made it faster and simpler for the company to schedule appointments.
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The company’s vaccine-scheduling system by default schedules all second doses four weeks after the first. Doses of Moderna’s vaccine, which Walgreens is also administering, are supposed to be spaced four weeks apart. Using the same gap for both vaccines was “the easiest way to stand up the process based on our capabilities at the time,” Dr. Kevin Ban, Walgreens’ chief medical officer, said in an interview. Now Walgreens is changing its system. Starting as soon as the end of the week, the pharmacy will automatically schedule people for Pfizer doses three weeks apart, Dr. Ban said.
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Experts said they were troubled. “It is not the role of a private, for-profit company to make public health decisions that should be determined by guidelines issued by a public health authority,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University. Dima Qato, a pharmacist and associate professor at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, said she was concerned about how the public perceived inconsistent messages about spacing doses of the same vaccine. “As we’re trying to build trust in this pandemic, I think this may push us back,” Dr. Qato said.