*Officials of the US Department of Health and Human Services have asked the country’s supermarket pharmacy chains to come to the rescue, as national vaccines rollout has not gone as smoothly as planned

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

Due to noticeable hitches in the national rollout of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines in the United States (US), which has not gone as smoothly as planned, the nation’s supermarket pharmacy chains are being asked to come to the rescue.

ConsumerConnect gathered that under the original distribution plan, this network of pharmacies would have been deployed after the high-priority population was immunised and the vaccine was opened up to the general population.

COVID-19 vaccination centre in the US

However, the Federal and state officials have concluded that their help is needed now to complete the somewhat slow first phase of the rollout, Wall Street Journal report said.

Colleen Lindholz, President of Kroger’s healthcare business, said: “We’re getting calls just because of the need.”

Lindholz disclosed that Kroger responded to requests for help in Georgia and South Carolina.

It has begun administering the shots to healthcare professionals at its stores there.

Kroger pharmacy professionals have also been deployed to long-term care facilities in Arkansas, Alaska, Texas, and West Virginia, report stated.

In as the rollout is lagging, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report that they’ve shipped out more than 17 million doses of the two vaccines,  the drug developed by Moderna and the vaccine jointly produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.

They, however, said only 5.3 million of those doses had ended up in people’s arms in the advanced economy thus far.