SALT LAGE CITY – Two Utah hospitals have received the first round of the Govt-19 vaccine, and will begin administering the vaccine Wednesday, Intermount Healthcare officials said Monday.
The vaccine has already reached the LDS Hospital of Intermountain in Salt Lake City and the Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, said Dr Christine Dascomp, medical director of Intermount Healthcare for Infectious Diseases for Staff Health. Intermount officials said the process of preparing the vaccines was underway and the deadline for hospital staff to be vaccinated was Wednesday afternoon. The first vaccine to be administered in Utah outside of clinical trials is expected to be at Utah Valley Hospital.
“Today marks the beginning of the end of this epidemic in Utah,” said Dr. Eddie Steinheim, epidemiologist at Intermount Healthcare.
“This is a proud day for science, a proud day for medicine,” he continued. “In 11 months, scientists around the world have a unique focus. We are all focused on how to maintain the health of SARS-CoV-2 and our communities.”
Intermount Healthcare experts spoke Monday, just hours after an intensive care unit nurse in New York City became the first American to be vaccinated outside of clinical trials. More than 23,000 vaccines are expected to arrive at five hospitals in the state this week following the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the vaccine for emergency use last week.
The Intermountain Medical Center in Murray and the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George are the other two Intermount-owned hospitals in the state that receive doses from the first round of vaccinations in Utah. Dascomp said those hospitals are expected to receive vaccine doses by Tuesday or the weekend.
The University Hospital in Salt Lake City, which is overseen by the University of Utah Health, is the only other hospital in Utah to receive vaccine doses from the first round in the state. A total of 154,000 vaccines will arrive by the end of this month, Utah officials said.
How the vaccine is administered
There is a comprehensive procedure for safely handling the COVID-19 vaccine. Dascomp explained that after the material management teams received the ship, the vaccines that had already arrived were taken to hospital pharmacies.
“This is to ensure both temperature stability and vaccine safety,” he said.
Before administering it, the vaccine should be dissolved at room temperature or refrigerated. Dascomp said the process could take anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours. Once it has dissolved, it will be placed in pre-measured syringes to administer within six hours of dissolving “to ensure consistency”.
Once prepared, it will be administered to health care professionals at high risk for COVID-19 exposure. They include physicians, nurses, technicians, and anyone else who works closely with COVID-19 patients. A schedule will be put together to ensure that there are no crowds at any of the facilities where the vaccine is administered, and that all hospitals are properly staffed as vaccinations take place.
Intermount plans to have a “strong monitoring system” for health workers with side effects to stay at home if needed and to report any adverse events to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dascomb added. Since the vaccine is administered in two round weeks, vaccinated recipients should schedule a time to receive a second dose.
More along the way
A further 131,000 volumes are expected to arrive in Utah in the next two weeks, based on first export and first-month estimates provided by the government.
The process of how vaccinations end up in the hands of a hospital staff. For example, vaccine dosages available to Utah hospitals this week are divided proportionally based on hospital staff and COVID-19 risk.
“In the short term, this is based on the number of workers and the number of patients, which the hospital has been caring for with COVID-19,” Dascomb explained. “In the early, early stages, it was assigned based on where those COVID-19 patients were and where our workers were most exposed.”
This is why different states end up with different magnitudes in the first wave. The New York Times compiled a list of vaccine dosage estimates published by all 50 states and other US agencies, territories, the Indian Health Service, the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Prisons.
Not all states and companies initially say how many doses will be available. Utah expects 154,400 doses by the end of December, which is expected to reach 65,000 Idoho, and 95,000 more than Montana. Utah’s total is less than the expected 2 million in California and 1.4 million in Texas – the two most populous states in the country; However, the Times noted that “due to differences in reporting practices between states, all numbers given are temporary and should not be used to draw comparisons.”
Before more hospitals began accepting COVID-19 patients, five Utah hospitals were selected to receive the first wave dose. Work is underway to ensure that other hospitals in the state receive the vaccine “immediately” as soon as it is available.
Utah health officials said last month that they expected 30 more medical facilities in the state to receive vaccines in the weeks since the first five hospitals received the drugs. It has more intermountain facilities, however not all of those facilities are comfortable to handle the sophisticated vaccine, Dascomp said. She does not know when other Intermountain facilities will receive the vaccine dose.
“We hope to have many more within the next week, but we don’t have any other (facilities) dates,” he said.
Confidence in vaccination
The COVID-19 vaccine usually breaks all records, and vaccines are available sooner than they are normally manufactured. This race to find the vaccine has led to questions if shortcuts are taken, which could cause safety concerns. Studies of the Pfizer / Bioentech vaccine have shown side effects, but most are mild in nature.
Intermountain epidemiologists “looked under the hood” and reviewed Pfizer’s data, as well as a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, Stenehem said. After reviewing the information, they all agreed that the vaccine should be given.
“We all feel that this vaccine is safe and effective,” he said. “We think this vaccine should be used as soon as possible in our health systems and in our communities. And to reassure everyone, we will get it as soon as we get it. We absolutely do not hesitate to vaccinate personally with this vaccine.”
Three more vaccines are in operation, starting with the Moderna vaccine, which could be approved this week.
Regardless, all COVID-19 vaccines pose important questions. Scientists do not yet know how long protection will last as a result of the vaccine or prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection or the disease that results from it. Stenagem questions will not be answered “for some time”, and the fact that a vaccine is now available does not mean that scientists have completed the study of COVID-19.
“Light at the end of the tunnel”
After a press conference in Intermountain, Utans reminded me that the progress of the vaccine is not the end of the COVID-19 epidemic. With seven new deaths reported, 2,000 new cases were identified on Monday. Since March, 235,872 cases of corona virus have been reported, with 1,062 cases ending in death.
An estimated 56,415 cases are currently pending, representing one-fifth of all cases to date. Utah health leaders said they were relieved they did not see the post-Thanksgiving spikes as much as they feared.
Think of this vaccine lightly at the end of the tunnel; However, the tunnel we are on is still long.
–D.R. Eddie Stoneham
Steneheim added to Udance that he followed the advice of health experts to help reduce the impact of COVID-19 cases from holiday meetings. He urged Udance to do the same during the December holidays.
Even with the positive news on Monday, the hospital staff is still in a bad reality. Stenehem said community exchange was still “very, very high” and ICU use at 10 referral hospitals in the state was 101% on Monday morning. It is high in all hospitals in the state. It is already included in the exhausted health care system.
That’s why health professionals celebrated the arrival of the vaccine, but reminded Uttans that it only signifies an end – not an end. They urge Udans to wear masks, wash their hands frequently, and socialize with others. They ask the Utans to avoid meetings with families outside.
“Think of this vaccine as a light at the end of the tunnel; however, the tunnel we are on is still long,” Stenheim said. “There are still a few months to get vaccinated widely in our communities.”
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