A new federal program is bringing an additional one million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Alabama.
The extra inoculations are made possible by the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program between the federal government and several national drug store chains.
Dr. Scott Harris is Alabama’s health officer. He said the program looks at each state and then recommends a partner for vaccine distribution.
“In our case, they’ve recommended Walmart, and we agree,” he said. “We’ve had calls with Walmart to talk about that program. We hope that things will be happening very, very soon. I think probably, they’re going to say that half of their pharmacies will start out with vaccines once that program begins.”
Harris said another positive from the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program is that more vaccine doses are coming to Alabama.
“The great thing about that is, this is a federal allocation that doesn’t come out of our state allocation. These are additional vaccines that we did not have before,” Harris said.
Alabama current has a weekly allotment of about 70,000 vaccine doses.
Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacies in Alabama will begin administering COVID-19 vaccines on Friday. Eligible customers can schedule a vaccine appointment through the Walmart and Sam’s Club websites once appointments are available.
Other pharmacies planning to offer inoculations include Walgreens, CVS, and Publix.