The largest vaccination campaign in US history is now underway with an intensive care nurse in New York among the first to receive a COVID-19 shot this morning as the death toll from the virus neared 300,000.
The nurse, Sandra Lindsay, received the Pfizer shot at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens just before 9.30am this morning during a livestream with New York Gov Andrew Cuomo.
‘It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,’ Lindsay said. ‘I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing 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.’
‘This is the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel,’ Cuomo said as he watched via video.
The first of the vaccinations were administered on a day where the COVID-19 death toll approached the harrowing 300,000 milestone and cases and hospitalizations posted new record highs over the past week.
President Donald Trump tweeted just moments after the ICU nurse received her dose: ‘First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!’
Shipments of the frozen vaccine vials began arriving at hospitals around the country first thing this morning so health care workers, as well as nursing home residents, can be the first to receive the shots in a bid to beat the pandemic that has claimed 299,163 American lives and infected more than 16.25 million.
The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The pharmaceutical giant said the first shipments will deliver three million doses to 64 states, US territories and major cities, as well as five federal agencies. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The rolling out of the vaccine came as the US posted yet another round of harrowing statistics – with the seven-day rolling averages for new infections, hospitalizations and deaths reaching new highs yesterday.
More than 186,880 new cases were reported on Sunday as the seven-day average hit 211,494, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Hospitalizations climbed to 109,331 with a 106,656 seven-day average.
The number of new deaths on Sunday were at 1,482, bringing the seven-day average to a record high of 2,427. The US is now seeing 300 more fatalities every 24 hours than it was during the previous peak in April.
In the face of a devastating surge in all three metrics that mark the severity of the nation’s outbreak, health officials are pinning their hopes of bringing the virus to its knees with a vaccine.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar described today as ‘historic’ and said he’ll watch frontline health care workers get vaccinated in Washington DC.
‘I’m just excited that I’m going to get to see some frontline health care workers today, as part of the plan to George Washington Hospital vaccination, and get to see them getting vaccinated – some of the first people in the county,’ Azar told NBC’s Today.
Azar predicted that Americans will be able to just go into their pharmacy by late February to get a COVID-19 vaccine, similar to how the flu vaccine is adminstered.
‘I think we could be seeing that (general public vaccination) by late February going into March. It really, again, is going to be up to our nation’s governors, but with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, we’ll have, as I said, as many as 100 million shots in arms by the end of February.’ FULL STORY
