CVS vaccinates 12,000 nursing home, assisted living residents for COVID-19 in Michigan

Detroit Free Press

Doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine sit before being administering to a "high priority group" of health care workers to receive the first doses of the vaccine at the Beaumont Service Center in Southfield on Tuesday, December 15, 2020. Beaumont Health is not mandating the vaccine for workers but strongly encouraging them to get vaccinated.

CVS has administered almost 12,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine to residents and staff at Michigan nursing homes and a handful of other long-term care facilities, according to numbers released Wednesday morning by the pharmacy chain.

CVS is one of two pharmacies vaccinating residents and staff members of those types of facilities as part of the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-term Care Program. It said it plans to vaccinate about 140,000 people in Michigan over the next 12 weeks. Walgreens, the other pharmacy contracted with the federal government to administer vaccines, has not released any data on the number of doses it has administered, how many it plans to administer or a timetable for doing so.

The CVS numbers are to be updated daily on weekdays at around 4 p.m., providing a snapshot of the progress being made in Michigan as well as the rest of the country. To see the dashboard, click here.

Michigan ranks 7th worst in nation in administering COVID-19 vaccines

Watch live at 1:30: Gov. Whitmer update on Michigan's COVID-19 response

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Michigan appears to be lagging behind most of the nation in administering the vaccines to those with top priority, which includes health care workers and nursing home residents. It has a vaccination rate of 992 per 100,000 people. Only five other states — Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia — rate lower in vaccinations per capita, according to the CDC.

But state epidemiologist Sarah Lyon-Callo said the CDC data is incomplete and not up-to-date. She said Michigan is doing much more than the CDC numbers indicate.

The most recent information from CVS, last updated on Jan. 5, shows that the pharmacy chain has given 11,385 first dose shots to residents and staff at nursing homes and 470 shots to residents at assisted and other long-term care facilities.

CVS said it began vaccinations in Michigan on Dec. 28.

According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, more than 300,000 people live in long term-care facilities.

Contact Georgea Kovanis: gkovanis@freepress.com