On Monday (Dec 14), an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse became the first person in the United States to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, calling it a sign that “healing is coming” as a whopping 300,000 lives were lost in the US coronavirus death toll.
At the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the New York City borough of Queens, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest COVID-19 patients for months, was given the vaccine, earning applause on a live stream with New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo.
“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history.
“I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe,” she added.
Cuomo tweeted a picture of Lindsay, wearing a mask and staring resolutely ahead, as a doctor injected her in the arm, and said she was the first American to get vaccinated.
“This is what heroes look like,” Cuomo wrote.
Northwell Health, run by New York’s largest healthcare system, Long Island Jewish Medical Center, was one of many select hospitals across the United States that delivered the country’s first COVID-19 vaccine inoculations outside of clinical trials on Monday.
The vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, a German partner, received an emergency use permit from federal regulators on Friday after a major clinical trial found it to be 95 percent successful in preventing disease.
As the country passed the grim milestone of 300,000 lives lost on Monday, with COVID-19 hospitalizations at record levels, its arrival offered some welcome relief. To date, more than 16 million US cases of coronavirus have been reported.
On a 7-day average, the United States is registering 2,462 deaths per day the highest since the pandemic began, according to a Reuters count.
On Sunday, just 11 months after the United States reported the first case of COVID-19, the first 2.9 million doses of the vaccine started being sent to distribution centers across the world.
“It’s been an incredible morning. It’s historic,” Dr. Leonardo Seoane said, speaking on a live stream video on Monday after being one of the first citizens of Louisiana to receive the vaccine at New Orleans’ Ochsner Medical Center, where he led some of the vaccine’s clinical trials.
Source: Andrew Cuomo, CBS News, CNA