IT BEGINS: NYC Nurse Becomes First American To Receive COVID-19 Vaccine

 

A critical care nurse in Queens, New York, has become the first person in the United States to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Sandra Lindsay, who has been on the frontline treating COVID-19 patients, is a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. She was vaccinated on-camera at the hospital as Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo looked on via livestream, the New York Post reported on Monday.“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said just after she took the shot. “I am feeling well. I would like to thank all the front line workers. I feel hopeful. I feel relieved.”

Applause broke out in the room after Lindsay was innoculated.

The nation’s first shot came the day after the first shipment of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine — given emergency approval in a landmark Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision late Friday — left a Michigan manufacturing plant.“Freight trucks carrying about 184,275 vials of vaccine departed the plant, and the combined 189 boxes of vaccine vials are expected to arrive in all 50 states on Monday,” a local news station, near the Portage, Michigan, Pfizer plant, reported Sunday morning.

The first shipment will serve 150 separate distribution locations, and the vaccines will likely go to front-line healthcare workers and specific, at-risk populations, including residents of long-term and nursing care facilities. In some states, like New York, residents of such facilities account for tens of thousands of coronavirus-related deaths, The Daily Wire reported on Sunday.

A second shipment, due out later this week, will supply sites serving a much larger population. By the end of December, Pfizer expects to have fully supplied more than 500 separate vaccination sites. Most of Sunday’s trucks were headed to a nearby airport, where they were loaded on board FedEx cargo planes.“Roughly 2.9 million doses are going out in the first shipments,” Politico reported Sunday. “Federal officials from Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine accelerator, said another 2.9 million will be reserved for people to receive their second dose of the shot, which is to be administered three weeks later. The government is also holding 500,000 doses of the vaccine — developed by Pfizer’s German partner, BioNTech — in emergency reserves.”

Three vaccines are currently in the works. Biotech firm Moderna on Nov. 30 moved to win emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine.

Moderna has also requested an EUA after Pfizer filed their application on Nov. 20. Moderna said its data showed their vaccine was 94.1% effective in its late-stage clinical trial, just under Pfizer’s efficacy rate of 95%. The Moderna vaccine was developed in conjunction with the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.A key advantage of Moderna’s vaccine is that it does not need sub-zero storage like Pfizer’s, which needs to be stored at -94 degrees.

A third vaccine is also in the pipeline. AstraZeneca and Oxford University on Nov. 23 said their jointly created COVID-19 vaccine has proven to be up to 90% effective and the makers claims will be easier to distribute.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on Dec. 2 voted to direct that healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities will be the first to get the shots in the initial rollout — once federal regulators authorize use of a vaccine. The recommendation was approved CDC Director Robert Redfield, but governors will eventually have the final say on who gets the vaccine first.