OREGON, USA — Some local and regional pharmacies are delaying COVID-19 vaccinations a few days, but say it's the right move to make sure everything is scheduled smoothly.
Trushar Patel owns five pharmacies in Oregon. Four are under the Health Mart franchise, one of the pharmacy groups in Oregon and Washington set to give vaccinations.
"There's a lot of moving parts to this," Trushar said.
This week the federal government sent out a million COVID-19 vaccine doses to 6,500 pharmacies nationwide.
Albertsons, Safeway, Costco and Fred Meyer have online schedulers for appointments, but most have not had any openings.
Vaccine supply remains low. Many Oregon pharmacies are only receiving about a hundred doses in this first round.
Pharmacies have also had to plan without much information about future dose shipments.
Health Mart said about eight of its franchises would begin vaccinations in Tillamook, Sandy Cove, Portland, Salem, Eugene and Medford.
It originally planned to launch an online vaccination scheduling tool this week, but has seen challenges play out for other pharmacy groups.
"It's gonna crash, right? So essentially we want to make sure everything is in place before it rolls out," Patel said. "Usually [new vaccines] take years. We're doing this in a short amount of time, so just kind of being understanding that this is already at a great pace."
Patel said his pharmacy in Tillamook already has a waiting list of hundreds of people who want the vaccine.
Health Mart encouraged Oregonians and Washingtonians to check back online for scheduling next week. It said appointments will ramp up once vaccine supply is greater.