Walmart Teams With Schools To Vaccinate Adolescents Against COVID-19

(RTTNews) - Retail giant Walmart has teamed up with school districts to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to adolescents through the Walmart and Sam's Club pharmacies just in time for summer. The shots will be provided with the recently authorized Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 12 to 15 at school-based vaccine clinics.

"With every vaccine administered, we get one step closer to our schools, communities and the country fully reponing — and that's a shot worth taking," said Del Sloneker, SVP and COO, Walmart U.S. Health & Wellness.

The clinics provide a familiar setting for adolescents to get vaccinated at their school, as well as a convenient location for parents. The clinics are staffed with trained pharmacy staff that support Walmart and Sam's Club pharmacies.

Initially, Walmart has worked with local school districts to coordinate vaccine clinics in dozens of communities throughout Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Walmart has already administered thousands of vaccines to date through this school vaccine program in the Exeter Township community. It is now working towards providing vaccines to even more students and families at additional schools across the country in the coming weeks.

Walmart has undertaken complex logistics navigation to set up vaccine clinics in schools. These include actions from bringing cold storage units onsite to safely transport the vaccines, to implementing a system to collect parental consent, to training our pharmacists to address vaccine hesitancy.

For the vaccination, Walmart has urged people to make an appointment at one of its more than 5,100 pharmacies administering the vaccine through the digital appointment scheduler (walmart.com/COVIDvaccine or samsclub.com/covid) or just walk into any Walmart or Sam's Club pharmacy. Walmart is currently offering only the Pfizer vaccine that has been authorized for those under age 18.

Walmart is partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and states to move as quickly as possible to help administer vaccines to eligible populations in participating states through Walmart stores and Sam's Clubs under the U.S. Federal Retail Pharmacy Program. It is a federal retail pharmacy partner in 22 states.

The retailer is in a position to safely and easily reach customers as about 150 million customers are already shopping for household and health care essentials at their stores. It is already at the heart of many rural and underserved communities as ninety percent of the country lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store.