Eleven months after documenting the first coronavirus infection in the U.S., and when the disease has left more than 35,000 dead in New York State, a disease at a city hospital, the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, has received on Monday morning the first vaccine against covid-19 that is administered in the country most affected by the pandemic, with more than 16 million cases and 300,267 deaths from coronavirus. The governor of the state, the Democrat Andrew Cuomo, established contact by videoconference with the hospital room and spread the moment on his Twitter account, officiating as a presenter. “The first New Yorker, the intensive care unit Sandra Lindsay, has been vaccinated. We are closer to healing. Thank you, Sandra, ”the governor wrote in a tweet headed by the word HISTORY in May.
The image of Lindsay, an African-American, receiving the serum is more than symbolic, as New York was the epicenter of the pandemic in the first wave, and the African-American population – along with the Latin – the most affected by the virus. The Long Island area belongs to the Queens district, which became the zero zone of the emergency last spring and today still records peaks of contagion higher than the rest of the city’s districts, while the state in the as a whole reported last week an average of 10,048 cases a day, 72% more than two weeks earlier. Hospitals are at the limit of their capacity, in an unprecedented rocket since May.
“I didn’t feel anything I didn’t experience when I gave him other vaccines,” Lindsay told the media in the hospital ward. “But I do feel hopeful, relieved, I think the cure is closer. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill confidence in the population that the vaccine is safe, ”he said after receiving, at 9.23 (six more hours on the Peninsula) and from the hands of an African-American doctor, the first dose of the vaccine developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German counterpart BioNTech, and which received the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year.
The answers to the five most relevant questions about new medicine.
To overcome reluctance on the part of those who object to the vaccine – including key workers such as New York firefighters, more than half of whom they prefer to avoid according to a survey released last week – Lindsay said she believed in science alone. defined as the engine that killed his work.
“This vaccination is exciting because I think it is the weapon that will end the war,” said Cuomo during the video conference presentation. “There are planes, trains and trucks roaming the state right now, we want to distribute it quickly.” The governor liked the work of health professionals and all those at the forefront of fighting the virus – such as reluctant firefighters – who he did not hesitate to call heroes.
Minutes after the health professional received his past, President Donald Trump also turned to Twitter to congratulate him on the news. “First vaccine given. Congratulations USA. Congratulations WORLD! ”, With its usual capital letters, in a last attempt to arrogate part of the merit after having repeatedly denied the seriousness of the disease and having turned it into a beautiful case politician, for example, regarding the use of the mask, which the Republican and his followers despise.
Moving to JFK International Airport at 5.40am and being transported to Queens Hospital in trucks tracked by a special geolocation system, the first batches of vaccine received in New York will begin to be protected this Monday to a population estimated at 1.8 million people, made up of the two beneficiary groups in the first place: health personnel and residents and workers in nursing homes and centers for the elderly. State sources quoted by the newspaper The New York Times they hope to have been able to complete this first phase in January. The second stage of immunization will include the rest of the essential workers, a wide category that includes politicians, pharmacists, teachers, supermarket workers and, of course, firefighters, who pinch their reluctance suffer 15 times more risk of infection the rest of the population according to various studies.
Hospitals in Texas, Utah and Minnesota reported Monday that the start of vaccination was imminent. Nearly three million Americans will be inoculated starting today, when 6.4 million doses will be distributed, although only half will be administered during the week, because the rest is reserved for the mandatory second dose that has to put in after three weeks to achieve 95% effectiveness. After receiving in three rounds this week the first shipment of the Pfizer, New York authorities expect to have an additional 346,000 doses of the vaccine developed by the Modern Pharmaceutical as soon as its FDA-approved sea use urgently.
Long Island Hospital is owned by Northwell Health, a nonprofit integrated health care red, as well as the mayor of New York State’s health care provider, with more than 74,000 employees. Long Island is one of its two flagship hospitals. The vaccine will then be distributed among the 90 centers in New York, mostly hospitals, which will arrive at the appropriate cold circuit for storage.
Coronavirus information
– Here you can follow the last hour on the evolution of the pandemic
– The coronavirus map: this is how cases are crossed one day and one country by country
– Questions and answers about coronavirus
– Guide to action in the face of the disease
– If you have symptoms, these are the phones that have been enabled in each country in Latin America.