First vax doses ready Dec. 15, top doc says
State to stock large acute care hospitals first
The first coronavirus vaccine doses from Pfizer could be available in Massachusetts on Dec. 15, according to the head of the state’s medical society, and will go to large acute care hospitals first.
In a Twitter thread posted Tuesday afternoon, Dr. David Rosman, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, said Pfizer vaccine approval will likely happen Dec. 10.Rosman said he was sharing information gathered during a call between the Department of Public Health and Massachusetts Medical Society.
“The first doses available 12/15 with more to follow. The initial allocation will go to large acute care hospitals, then to community health centers, then large practices then everywhere,” Rosman wrote.
He tagged Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Lahey Health and Boston Medical Center in the message.
He said shipping will be handled by McKesson Corp., which DPH has previously confirmed.
Quoting DPH Medical Director Dr. Larry Madoff, Rosman wrote that the doses will be free — but regulations about social distancing, masks, PPE and travel won’t change right away.
When asked to confirm the contents of the Twitter thread, a DPH spokeswoman referred the Herald to comments made by Gov. Charlie Baker in a Tuesday press conference.
Baker said, “We should expect to see vaccine distributed sometime in midDecember, that they would begin the distribution process for Pfizer sometime in mid-December, and the Moderna (vaccine) would probably start to be distributed shortly after that.”
Baker went on to say it wouldn’t be until spring that the average person could have access to the vaccine.
Also on Wednesday, Pfizer was given the green light from British officials to become the first Western country to approve a coronavirus vaccine and could begin administering shots within days.
Medical experts have hailed COVID vaccines as a “light at the end of the tunnel” of the pandemic that has killed nearly 1.49 million people and infected more than 64 million across the globe.
But not everyone in Massachusetts is likely to seek out the shots once they’re widely available, a new survey from Western New England University shows.
More than one-third of respondents, 38% in all, said they would be unlikely to get a vaccine. Of those, 22% said they would be “very unlikely” to get the vaccine and 16% said they would be “somewhat unlikely.” Top reasons, according to the polling institute, included lack of trust in the approval process and concerns about potential side effects.
“Despite the suffering and deprivation … a sizable percentage of the public right now is not convinced about the value of getting a vaccine,” polling director Tim Vercellotti said in a press release.