Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in The New York Times, in “CDC Uncertainty Upends Covid Vaccine Access at CVS and Walgreens,” by Maggie Astor and Dani Blum. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
CVS and Walgreens, the country’s two largest pharmacy chains, are for now clamping down on offering Covid vaccines in more than a dozen states, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration. …
Experts are themselves divided on what pharmacies can do, but they agree that the choices are hard.
Whether last year’s C.D.C. recommendation on Covid shots still applies is ambiguous, said Richard Hughes IV, a vaccine lawyer who teaches at George Washington University Law School and worked for Moderna early in the pandemic. There is an argument that it does still apply, and that pharmacists can administer the updated vaccines under it unless ACIP says otherwise, he said.
