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NEW YORK: New York on Monday (December 14) inoculated its first healthcare worker, a nurse from the intensive care unit in Queens, with the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, marking a fundamental turn in the US effort to control deadly virus.
Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse, received the vaccine at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, one of the first epicenters of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, and received applause on a live broadcast with the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It felt no different than taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like the cure is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”
Minutes after Lindsay’s injection, President Donald Trump tweeted: “First vaccine administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
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Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare system, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the nation’s first inoculations of the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside of trials Monday.
The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95 percent effective at preventing disease in a large clinical trial.
The first 2.9 million doses began shipping to distribution centers across the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.
As of Monday, the United States had recorded 16,286,343 cases and 299,489 deaths from the virus.
Hospitals in Texas, Utah and Minnesota said they also anticipated receiving their first doses of the vaccine at select hospitals on Monday, to be administered immediately.
LOGISTICS CHALLENGE
The first U.S. shipments of the coronavirus vaccine left the Pfizer facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry ice to maintain necessary sub-arctic temperatures, and then transported to waiting UPS and FedEx planes in airfields in Lansing. and Grand Rapids, launching a national immunization effort of unprecedented complexity.
READ: Trump, Pence, and other senior officials to receive COVID-19 vaccine: Report
The planes delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx freight centers in Louisville and Memphis, respectively, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks for distribution to the first 145 of 636 vaccine preparation areas across the country.
The second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“This is the most difficult vaccine launch in history. There will certainly be setbacks, but we have done our best from the federal level and we have worked with partners to make everything as easy as possible. Please bear with us,” he said Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the vaccine as soon as he can.
The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine at minus 70 degrees Celsius, requiring massive amounts of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers.
READ: British grandmother is the first in the world to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside the trial
Workers cheered and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.
“We know that we are all suffering, our families are suffering. We are going into the Christmas holidays with closings and people will be very affected by this pandemic. We know how many people are suffering,” said Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Healthcare. said Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky
Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be the first to receive vaccinations in a two-dose regimen given three weeks apart.
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