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In some states, pharmacists are forbidden to administer vaccines that are not recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel.
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By Maggie Astor and Dani Blum, New York Times Service
August 29, 2025 | 9:15 AM
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CVS, the country’s largest pharmacy chain, is currently not offering COVID vaccines in 16 states, including Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration.
Amy Thibault, a spokesperson for CVS, cited “the current regulatory environment” as the reason the vaccine was not available in those states, or in the District of Columbia, emphasizing that the list could change. Legal experts said that federal decisions were creating an extremely difficult situation for pharmacies to navigate.
In some states, pharmacists are forbidden to administer vaccines that are not recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel.
Last year, the panel voted to recommend updated COVID vaccines in June. In 2023, it endorsed new COVID vaccines in September, just one day after the FDA gave its approval.
But as of Thursday, the panel was not scheduled to meet for another three weeks. And, after a slew of high-level resignations at the CDC, Sen. Bill Cassidy R-La., the chair of the Senate’s health committee, has called for the meeting to be “indefinitely” postponed. That could mean many people’s access to shots remains hamstrung well into the fall, when infections from respiratory viruses normally spike.
CVS will make the vaccines available nationwide if the advisory panel recommends them, Thibault said. But since the panel hasn’t yet made a decision, the company is holding off in states where it believes its pharmacists need a CDC endorsement.
Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.
Pharmacies have traditionally been a crucial access route to the COVID vaccine, accounting for a vast majority of shots given last year. The CVS move is a strong signal that federal decisions could reduce access more than the restrictions laid out on paper, and the confusion is likely to crop up at other pharmacies as well, legal experts said.
Walgreens, the nation’s second largest pharmacy chain, did not respond to requests for comment about the availability of COVID shots at its stores. But when a New York Times reporter tried to schedule vaccine appointments in all 50 states, the pharmacy’s website said patients would need a prescription in 16.
Requiring prescriptions for the shots would be a total change in practice, said Dr. Marc Sala, a co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center in Chicago.