CLEVELAND — It’s all hands on deck to get the COVID-19 vaccine to the most vulnerable.
"We’re really excited to be here today, a historic moment for us,” said Sarita Saadeharfouche, Ohio regional director of CVS Health.
On Monday, CVS started administering vaccines to folks in nursing homes. The company is assigned to between 1,000 and 1,400 assisted living facilities in our state and it says it has enough vaccines to cover everyone in those spots, including staff if they want to get it and everyone is pitching in.
"They’re pharmacists, they’re interns and they’re immunizing technicians all licensed in Ohio,” said Saadeharfouche.
CVS joins Walgreens who started administering the COVID-19 vaccine to nursing homes last week.
Governor Mike DeWine says he’s excited so many Ohioans are already being vaccinated and he’s looking forward to other potential vaccines to speed up the process.
“We also hope that there's more streams flowing into the river,” said the governor. "We have two streams flowing into the river and we hope that we get, get three and four, maybe five.”
He’s of course cautioning folks about the upcoming holiday.
“We're just asking Ohioans to one more time step up as the vaccines have started coming in. And there's great hope. We also know we've got to continue to stay focused on keeping this spread down,” said DeWine.
Right now, the focus is getting healthcare workers and the elderly vaccinated, but when it's time for the general public, CVS says it's going to have a part in handling that too.
"Our stores are getting ready now to make sure that we have the capacity and the staff to immunize our general population in the same way that we’ve done the flu vaccinations,” said Saadeharfouche.
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