BERN TWP., Pa. – The first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Berks County.
On Thursday afternoon, UPS delivered a shipment to St. Louis Medical Center. Joseph of Penn State Health, in the municipality of Bern.
Kelsey Overfield, pharmaceutical clinical services coordinator at Penn Medical Health St. Joseph Medical Center, opens on Thursday, December 17, 2020 the first shipment of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the hospital.
Kelsey Overfield, the hospital’s pharmacists ’clinical services coordinator, unpacked the 975 product and put it in a cold storage, where it will be stored until staff inoculation begins in the next few days.
St. Joe’s said he has developed plans to distribute the vaccine in three phases, following recommended guidelines from the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first employees of the pandemic will be offered the first vaccination.
Reading Hospital also received a shipment of COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday, but did not provide information on how many doses it received or when inoculations will begin.
Meanwhile, a second COVID-19 vaccine came close to joining the U.S. fight against the pandemic on Thursday as government advisers convened for a public review of its safety and effectiveness.
It is the latest step for the vaccine developed by the modern drug manufacturer and the National Institutes of Health. The group of doctors and medical researchers approved it. Monitoring will now be done after the Food and Drug Administration is well within a few hours or days.
The Penn Medical Health St. Joseph Medical Center received the first shipment of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, December 17, 2020.
The two new vaccines use fragments of the COVID-19 genetic code to train the immune system to detect and fight the virus. Both require two doses, separated by weeks.