NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York on Monday vaccinated its first health care worker, an intensive care unit nurse, with the Pfizer / Bioentech Covit-19 vaccine, which marks a major turning point in the U.S. effort to control the deadly virus.
Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse, was vaccinated at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, which was the starting point for the country’s Govt-19 outbreak and received applause in a live broadcast with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel confident today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of the most painful time in our history. I want to instill a general belief that the vaccine is safe.”
Minutes after Lindsay was injected, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “The first vaccine was administered. Congratulations America! Congratulations world! ”
Northwell Health, the largest healthcare organization in New York, operates a select few hospitals in the United States that administered the Pfizer / Bioentech Covit-19 vaccine, the nation’s first vaccine, out of testing on Monday.
The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner Bioendech, received emergency approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing the disease in a major clinical trial.
The first 2.9 million doses began shipping to distribution centers across the country on Sunday, 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infection.
As of Monday, there were 16,286,343 cases and 299,489 deaths from the virus in the United States.
Hospitals in Texas, Utah and Minnesota said they expect to receive the first dose of the vaccine at selected hospitals on Monday, which will be managed right now.
Logical challenge
The first U.S. shipment of the corona virus vaccine departed from a Pfizer facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Sunday, loaded on trucks with dry ice to maintain the required sub-Arctic temperature, and then flown to UPS and FedEx aircraft waiting in the airfields at Lansing. And the Grand Rabbits, launching a national immunization effort of unprecedented complexity.
The jets are shipped to UPS and FedEx cargo centers in Louisville and Memphis, respectively, from where they are loaded onto planes and trucks and distributed to the top 145 in 636 vaccinated areas across the country. The second and third waves of vaccine exports were expected to leave the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“This is the toughest vaccine release in history. Undoubtedly there will be hiccups, but we have done everything from a federal level and made it go as smoothly as possible with allies. Please be patient with us,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday. He said that.
The logistics attempt is further complicated by storing the Pfizer / Bioentech vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), which requires plenty of dry ice or a special ultra-cold freezer.
Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded into trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.
“We all know our families are suffering and we are going on strike over the Christmas holidays and people will be most affected by this epidemic,” said Wes Wheeler, head of UPS Healthcare at the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky.
Healthcare workers and seniors living in long-term care homes will be the first to line up to receive two-dose regulatory vaccines given at three-week intervals.
Report by Lisa Lambert, Lisa Bertlin and Gabriella Porter; Editing by Angus Maxwan and Paul Simao