Expert: Pharmacists Are Key to Increasing COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

Robert Walker, MD, senior vice president, chief medical officer, and interim head of research and development at Novavax, explains why pharmacists are well-positioned to play a crucial role in boosting COVID-19 and flu vaccination rates to help manage the anticipated health care burden this upcoming winter season. Strategies include accepting walk-ins, conducting outreach in non-traditional settings like workplaces and senior living facilities, and offering COVID-19 vaccines alongside routine flu shots. By making vaccines more accessible and convenient, and providing education and encouragement, pharmacists can help protect individuals, families, and communities from the potentially severe impacts of respiratory viral infections.

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Q: What are the long-term implications of low vaccination rates for public health and health care systems?

Robert Walker: One of the main implications for low vaccination rate is an increased burden on our medical system. I think we all remember back in the early days 2020-2021, emergency rooms were filled to capacity. Hospital beds were filled. It was really hard for people who needed acute care to get it because the system was so overburdened. We're getting ready to go into our main winter respiratory virus season and the holiday season, right when families congregate and go in, more time is spent indoors than outdoors. So those are all opportunities for viral respiratory infections to spread very quickly. So we really want to make sure that we keep the burden on the health care system at a manageable level. In order to do that, it's really important for people to get vaccinated for COVID and for other respiratory viruses like influenza, for example.

Q: How can pharmacists address the vaccine hesitancy and encourage patients to get vaccinated?

Robert Walker: Well, pharmacists are health care providers, and they are also trusted professionals in our communities. I think we all see our pharmacists probably more often than we see our physicians, right? Pharmacists have many more opportunities to spread the word and help to reinforce the messages of how important it is to stay vaccinated and stay healthy. I think the main thing that one of the many things they can do is just make sure they're offering those recommendations to their customers who come in, even when they come in for other reasons, or if they come in, for example, to get a flu shot. Because I think maybe people are more used to doing that on an annual basis. So using that as an opportunity to say, "hey, while you're here to get a flu shot, what about getting a COVID vaccine as well." So to emphasize again, they're trusted members of the community. They have more, probably more, interaction with folks than other other health care providers, and seizing on those opportunities to see them as opportunities to vaccinate people and get people educated about COVID-19, I think would would help a lot.

Q: What strategies can pharmacists use to increase vaccine accessibility and convenience for patients?

Robert Walker: So increasing accessibility and convenience are really important, right? Because people, lots of people, myself included, may be well intentioned. Intend to get vaccinated, but life gets in the way. So the more barriers that can be removed, right? The more obstacles, the better. So making it as easy as possible, for example, being able to accept walk ins instead of asking folks to go home and schedule on the internet. For example, seeking opportunities to go out into the community in places of work or senior living facilities or schools or other other places where there's a lot of people, lot of foot traffic, and bringing the vaccine to the community instead of the reverse, and those just community outreach and other creative ways of making it easy to and removing obstacles would be sort of on my short list for how we can make vaccines more accessible.

Q: How can pharmacies collaborate with other health care providers and communities to further improve vaccination rates?

Robert Walker: I think it gets back to some of the things we've been talking about in terms of community outreach, going to maybe nontraditional settings to vaccinate, so that we just lower the burden on the customer or on the patient, make it easy for them to get vaccinated and obviously providing them as much information as possible being available to answer questions and encourage folks to to do what they can to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Robert Walker: I think it's important to understand that our company, Novavax, manufactures a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, so we're the only company that makes a protein based vaccine for the US. And why is that important? It's important that people have a choice in what type of vaccine they elect to use for themselves or their children or their older parents. For example, choice has been demonstrated to be one of those things that increases vaccine uptake. So in the long run, it's really important for public health to have more than 1 type of vaccine available for people to be able to choose from and and like I said, we're the only company that's making a protein-mixed vaccine for the US population. Our vaccine for the 2024-2025 season is targeted at what we call the JN.1 strain. That's the parent of this whole family of viruses that's currently circulating, and a lot of experts in the field have noted that it probably makes the most sense to target your vaccine at the parent strain to optimize the opportunity for protection against new variants that are going to emerge within this family over the next number of months. So I think with those 2 points, I think it's covered what I wanted to be sure to say.