Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced on Tuesday the receipt of more than $100 million in opioid settlement payments from drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies who agreed to the financial compensation for their role in the opioid crisis.
The press release by Miyares’ office explained the latest round of payments totaled about $108.4 million of the $1.1 billion secured by Virginia in opioid settlements.
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Virginia is slated to receive approximately $366 million as part of the $17.3 billion nationwide settlements with opioid manufacturers Teva and Allegan and pharmacies CVS and Walgreens, Attorney General Jason Miyares announced.
“This milestone settlement with two major drug makers and two major pharmacies has been a long time coming,” said Miyares. “I look forward to seeing the positive impacts on our communities and lives this money will have across Virginia.”
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Walgreens decided on Thursday not to distribute abortion-inducing drugs in some states where they are legal following pushback on multiple fronts, according to Politico.
With continuously changing policies, warnings from state attorneys general and pressure from anti-abortion activists, this decision reflects an abundance of caution, according to Politico. Nearly two dozen state attorneys general signed onto a letter threatening legal action against Walgreens if they go forward with dispensing the drugs, which are now America’s most popular method to terminate pregnancies.
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Virginia is expected to receive $60 million as part of a tentative $3.1 billion settlement agreement with Walmart after allegations of insufficient oversight of opioid dispensing at the chain’s pharmacies.
“Companies who facilitated the dispensing of opioids contributed to the opioid epidemic that has devastated millions of lives. This significant settlement will help us fight back against the epidemic and provide abatement and rehabilitation resources to suffering Virginians,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a press release.
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Over 82 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been wasted since the start of the pandemic, including roughly 11% distributed by the federal government, according to the Center for Disease Control.
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The pharmaceutical chain Walgreens will be closing five stores in San Francisco, California due to a spike in “organized” shoplifting impacting its locations, according to MarketWatch via MSN.
The decision was made by Walgreens’ parent company, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., which will relocate all employees to new locations and ship all outstanding prescriptions to other stores within one mile of the original stores. The stores will be shut down sometime between November 8th and November 17th.
“Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average,” the company revealed in the statement announcing the decision. “To help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average, in an effort to provide a safe environment.”
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The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) announced on Thursday that it is expanding its partnership with Walgreens to offer Abbott BinaxNOW rapid antigen COVID-19 testing for free at specific locations throughout the Commonwealth, according to a press release from the agency.
Before the expanded agreement only four Walgreens in the state were providing the drive-through tests, but now that number has increased to 15 select locations, the release said.
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CVS announced Monday that it has formally launched its program to administer COVID-19 vaccines to residents and staff of long-term care facilities and will begin its efforts in Virginia on December 28th, according to a press release.
The company said that its teams will start administering doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week across 12 states – including Ohio, Connecticut, Florida and Oregon, among others – and expects to vaccinate a total of four million residents and staff at over 40,000 long-term care facilities through the program.
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