CVS announces walk-in coronavirus vaccinations at pharmacies across US

CVS Health announced on Wednesday that its pharmacy locations across the U.S. will begin accepting walk-in COVID-19 appointments.

Additionally, CVS pharmacies will now allow same-day scheduling, including appointments that are made as soon as one hour in advance.

“We continue to orchestrate an all-out effort to vaccinate the nation against COVID-19,” CVS Health President and CEO Karen S. Lynch said in a statement to The Hill.

The company said it is offering inoculations in more than 8,300 stores across 49 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

CVS pharmacies offer the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

CVS is the latest pharmacy to allow walk-in COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Rite Aid, Walgreens, Walmart and Sam’s Club have all announced that they will accept walk-in vaccine appointments.

Rite Aid said walk-in vaccines will be accommodated on a “limited basis in every store,” and Walgreens announced that walk-in appointments will be available at select stores nationwide.

CVS and Walgreens, however, came under fire earlier this week after a report from Kaiser Health News (KHN) revealed that the pharmacy chains have wasted thousands of COVID-19 vaccines.

According to KHN, of the 182,874 wasted doses recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March, CVS was responsible for about half of them.

Walgreens, according to KHN, was responsible for about 21 percent of the overall wasted doses.

In total, the two pharmacy chains threw out around 128,500 COVID-19 vaccine shots, according to the data.