Frontline workers receiving Pfizer’s vaccine

“Painless and simple.” That’s how Patrick O’Ferrall, a certified registered nurse anesthetist at Hamilton Medical Center, described his reaction after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Monday morning at the hospital.

Across the country, as the first rounds of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine were being administered, thousands of people had the same response. While there have been a few cases of people having a negative reaction to the vaccine, it has been overwhelmingly positive.

Frontline workers in Dalton and Whitfield County began receiving the vaccination on Friday. Officials with Hamilton Medical Center received nearly 1,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that day and hope to administer several hundred shots a day to their frontline workers, many of whom help with patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

The Pfizer vaccine requires two doses roughly 21 days apart for optimal effectiveness, so all those who received it Friday and this week will need the second shot in about three weeks.

We are so very thrilled that the vaccine has finally arrived, and arrived locally as our area has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Whitfield County had 9,993 cases of COVID-19, more than all but nine of Georgia’s 159 counties, and Whitfield County’s rate of 9,547 cases per 100,000 was third highest in the state, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. In Whitfield County, 109 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.

Over the past two weeks, Whitfield County residents have tested for COVID-19 at a rate of 18.4%, much higher than the state’s positivity rate of 13.4% during that same time.

Because initial COVID19 vaccine supplies are limited, the Georgia Department of Public Health at the state and local level is following the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices by prioritizing the vaccine for health care personnel and residents of long-term care facilities, according to the North Georgia Health District.

While the first rounds of the vaccine are largely going to frontline workers and elderly residents of nursing homes, it will be only a matter of time before the vaccine is available to the rest of us.

The vaccine has been proven to be safe and effective. Along with wearing masks, social distancing and other measures, the COVID19 vaccine will be key to our lives returning to normal.

—