Illinois is diverting 97,000 coronavirus vaccine doses away from a federal partnership with pharmacies that is overseeing vaccinations in nursing homes and making those shots available to people 65 and older, and front-line essential workers, state health officials said Wednesday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker and officials in other states have criticized the federal partnership with Walgreens and CVS for moving too slowly in vaccinating residents and staff at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities nationwide.
However, the Democratic governor more recently has said the pharmacy companies assured the state that the first round of vaccinations at assisted living facilities would be completed by Feb. 15. The program already has completed its first round of visits to nursing homes, Pritzker said.
Nursing home residents make up close to half of the state’s nearly 20,000 coronavirus deaths.
As of Tuesday, the federal government had allocated 496,100 of Illinois’ vaccine doses — about one-quarter of the state’s total — to the pharmacy program, but only 175,900 doses had been administered.
Overall, 1,094,135 doses had been administered statewide as of Tuesday, a little more than half the total number of doses allocated to Illinois and the city of Chicago. The number of Illinois residents who have been fully vaccinated — receiving both of the required two shots — reached 244,588 on Tuesday. Over the past week, the state averaged 45,787 doses administered per day.
Pritzker has been criticized for the lack of available appointments for people eligible to be vaccinated under phase 1b of the state’s vaccination plan, even as he and other officials have urged patience due to the extremely limited supply of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines from the federal government.
The Biden administration has promised an increase of vaccine shipments to the state, with Walgreens stores in Illinois slated to get an additional 39,300 doses weekly.
After touring a mass vaccination site at a hotel on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Wednesday, Pritzker defended the state’s rollout, noting that Illinois is sixth among all states in the number of vaccine doses administered.
“Because of local health departments like Champaign, Illinois continues to reach new heights in our vaccination infrastructure,” Pritzker said. “Earlier this week, we became the sixth state in the United States to surpass a million doses administered. Among those most populous states, Illinois is administering doses quite quickly.”
But data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Illinois falls to the back of the pack when accounting for population size.
Illinois has been picking up the pace in its vaccination efforts, logging a state record 65,166 vaccines administered Tuesday, but the CDC data shows that as of Wednesday the state ranked 46th among the states and Washington, D.C., in doses administered per 100,000 residents.
The state is able to reallocate shots from the federal pharmacy partnership without risking a shortage for long-term care residents and staff because the federal government initially overestimated how many doses would be needed to complete those immunizations, Pritzker said.
“As it turns out, they counted every bed and not every person. As you know there are facilities that are not full,” he said. “In addition, they assumed that every person that would be offered, including staff, would take the vaccine. That also has not been the case.
“So essentially, there has been a reallocation out of that to make sure that we can get as many vaccines into the arms of as many people as possible.”
Of the 97,000 doses being diverted, 80,000 will go to CVS pharmacies across Illinois and 17,000 will go to Walgreens locations, according to the state. The state will still have about 110,000 doses remaining for the long-term care program, not including Chicago’s separate share. The program is administering about 36,000 doses per week outside of Chicago.
CVS Health, which has not started vaccinating people in its Illinois stores, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Deerfield-based Walgreens is “working hand-in-hand with states to achieve the shared goal of vaccinating our most vulnerable populations as quickly as possible,” spokeswoman Emily Hartwig-Mekstan said in a statement.
The Illinois Department of Human Services also is deploying at least eight teams of nurses and other workers to assist with vaccination efforts at assisted living facilities, intermediate care facilities for people with developmental disabilities and group homes, officials announced. Facilities in the final stages of the federal program will be able to opt to have a state team finish the vaccinations.
Also Wednesday, the state loosened coronavirus restrictions in DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties, a day after doing the same for suburban Cook County.
The suburban counties join a wave of regions that have met the bench marks to enter phase four of Pritzker’s reopening plan — the least restrictive measures that have been in place since the governor’s initial stay-at-home order in March — over the past two weeks. The shift includes slightly expanded indoor dining, the opening of some recreation facilities, and an increased capacity limit for meetings and social events.
Under the state’s phase four guidelines, restaurants can serve parties of up to 10 people, as long as tables remain 6 feet apart. Social gatherings can host up to 50 people or 50% of room capacity.
Recreation facilities such as bowling alleys and skating rinks will be allowed to open, while indoor playgrounds and trampoline parks remain closed. Museums and zoos remain limited to 25% capacity.
Officials in Chicago and Cook County have chosen to maintain tighter crowd limits for restaurants and other restrictions despite the eased state rules.
The entire state previously reached this level of relaxed restrictions in late June before the fall resurgence of the coronavirus led Pritzker to crack down again.
While Illinois hasn’t made it back to the summertime lows as measured by new cases and deaths, the coronavirus is maintaining its downward trajectory.
Officials reported 3,314 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 69 additional fatalities Wednesday, bringing the total number of known infections in Illinois to 1,134,231 and the statewide death toll to 19,375.
Over the past week, the state has averaged 3,150 daily cases and 59 deaths per day, numbers not seen since the fall.
Wednesday’s new cases resulted from a batch of 96,894 tests. The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests was 3.5% as of Tuesday. The positivity rate is at its lowest since the week ending Oct. 5, when it was 3.4%.
As of Tuesday night, 2,469 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 520 patients in intensive care units and 270 patients on ventilators. Those figures also have continued trending downward after spiking during the fall.
Health experts remain concerned that new variants of the virus could lead to yet another resurgence of the disease before enough people are vaccinated to slow the spread.
Tribune reporter Lisa Schencker contributed.
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