On October 7, Argentum joined a call with the CDC focused on vaccine distribution in nursing homes and assisted living communities. Some key takeaways from the call include:

• Concerning dosage of vaccines: Vaccines would use the same product for two doses with the second dose recommended to occur after an interval of approximately 21-28 days from the first dose.
• Depending on the vaccines that are approved, there could be strict requirements to store them at temperatures of 20 or 80 degrees below zero (referred to as cold-chain storage requirements). It could be a challenge for many long-term care communities to meet these needs.
• The CDC is using a few strategies for nursing homes and assisted living communities to communicate how they wish to work with a pharmacy provider regarding the distribution and administration of the vaccine. A set of options will be available for nursing homes to choose within the COVID-19 reporting module of NHSN, and an online selection tool will be distributed to assisted living communities that are not able to access NHSN.
• The CDC is also putting together a toolkit for nursing homes and assisted living communities, which includes several components including communications messages such as suggested social media posts.
• The group responsible for administering the COVID-19 vaccine will be required to submit data about the administration (e.g., vaccine name, lot #, date of admin, etc.) to a federal or state immunization registry within 24-48 hours of administration. Collecting and documenting this information for all residents and employees given the vaccine could be another challenge for long-term care communities unfamiliar with reporting immunization data.