By CNN staff | December 4, 2020 at 2:03 PM EST – Updated December 8 at 2:48 PM
(CNN) – Two U.S. pharmacy chains are preparing to give out COVID vaccines as soon as there’s a green light from the Food and Drug Administration.
Health care workers and long-term care facility residents will be the first to get the vaccinations from CVS and Walgreens.
“Our plan is to be ready to go as early as Dec. 15, waiting for the state approvals,” said Dr. Troy Brennan, the chief medical officer at CVS Health.
In October, the Trump administration announced agreements with CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate residents of long-term care facilities nationwide.
The pharmacy chains already have a list of those organizations.
“We’ve basically got 31,000 locations where we’re going to have to be doing the vaccination and that’s about 2 million patients,” according to Brennan. “We’ll know who it is; where they are and how many patients there are.”
CVS plans to send teams to each of the facilities three times in the coming months. An average team will consist of two vaccinators and one support staffer.
Brennan said they’re already working out details for vaccine distribution within each state.
“Once we get into sort of general distribution, I suspect that not only ourselves and Walgreens, but there’s going to be a number of other pharmacy chains and grocers who will be involved in it,” he said.
“I think that using all those various outlets, we’re going to have very good penetration across the United States.”
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