Government confirms Walgreens will be next to offer vaccine.

Walgreens soon will be the next pharmacy chain to begin offering the COVID19 vaccine in Florida, joining a growing list of companies that have expanded the distribution of doses, the federal government confirmed Monday.

Walgreens hasn’t yet said which stores or counties will have the vaccine, and a spokesperson for Walgreens did not respond to emails and phone calls that requested more details. But “Walgreens has been added in Florida,” said Katherina Grusich, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Walgreens’ vaccine participation in Florida “may depend on when vaccine is ordered and delivered, and pharmacy partners are still placing orders for this week,” Grusich said.

Florida, the third most-populous state, has the most Walgreens stores in the U.S., with 820 locations, according to the Walgreens website. Until Monday, Walgreens was getting vaccines for distribution directly from the CDC for 24 states, the cities of Chicago and New York City, and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Walgreens will join CVS, Publix, Walmart and Southeastern

Grocers, the parent company for Winn-Dixie, in distributing the vaccine through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program in Florida.

The retail pharmacy program is separate from the state’s allocation of vaccines, which is designated for Department of Health locations, hospitals, Publix and other select sites.

Walgreens already has played a role in vaccinations in Florida: In December, it was selected, along with CVS, to go into nursing homes to administer the vaccines.

This week, the companies participating in vaccinations in Florida will share 190,000 doses for distribution, Grusich told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Monday.

Last week’s allotment for the pharmacies in Florida was 130,000 doses “and the increase is primarily due” to the addition of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, she said.

The retail giants participating in the federal program are listed on the CDC website, and then Florida details the plans for the rollout. The CDC recently announced CVS’s planned rollout before Gov. Ron DeSantis detailed how CVS Pharmacy, CVS Pharmacy y más, and Navarro Discount Pharmacy locations across Florida would get the vaccine.

Your editorial is spot-on from the aspects of “process maintenance and repair,” but not from the engineering, logistics and management aspects of “process improvement and replacement.” [“Don’t fix what’s not broken in Florida’s election law | Editorial,” Feb. 25]

As your editorial states, we can elect our representatives by two basic, vulnerable processes: in-person voting at costly, complex and time-consuming manned government voting centers or by slow, unreliable mail-in ballots.

Yet a third basic voting process concept is available: the interactive Voter Cyber Card (VCC) to replace or augment the passive, vulnerable, identity-based Voter Registration Card (VRC).

At least 75% of voters have access to electronic devices that connect to the internet. If our elected and appointed governing representatives create many low-cost, secured, walk-in VCC centers, theoretically all voters can cast their vote securely, be counted and confirmed by documents in real-time with their disposable, personally secured VCC.