1,010 state health care workers vaccinated
A total of 1,010 Wisconsin health care workers from 45 counties had gotten their first shots of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the day Wednesday, state health officials say.
But some hospitals said they were still waiting to hear from Wisconsin officials about when they would receive their first vaccine doses.
Aspirus Health said Thursday that its first COVID-19 vaccine shipment was delivered to Aspirus Keweenaw Hospital in Laurium, Michigan, and had started vaccinating employees. But Aspirus had not yet received confirmation from the state Department of Health Services on when its Wisconsin hospitals will receive its first doses of vaccine.
“It is exciting that this important tool in the fight against the pandemic is now available and we eagerly await the time when vaccine supplies become more widely available in 2021 to begin offering it to our community members,” Matthew Heywood, president and CEO of Aspirus, said in a statement.
Asked about hospitals waiting for vaccine shipments during a Thursday news conference, DHS Secretary-designee Andrea Palm said officials were trying to work quickly with health care systems.
“There are federal requirements about registering to be a vaccinator, and we are engaged with our health care providers around the state about making their way through the process,” Palm said.
She added, “It will take months for us to get through all of our health care workers. We want that work to happen as quickly as possible.”
With a limited supply, hospitals rolling out vaccines carefully
The Milwaukee VA Medical Center, which received 2,945 doses of vaccine on Tuesday, vaccinated its first five employees Wednesday.
The same number were vaccinated at Ascension Franklin on Wednesday.
On Thursday, deliveries of the Pfizer vaccine had arrived at more locations around the state, including Froedtert in Milwaukee County.
“We’ll start our clinics tomorrow,” said hospital spokeswoman Gerry Steele.
Froedtert had been scheduled to receive 2,925 doses of the vaccine, which was developed in record time by Pfizer and the German company BioNTech and being distributed slowly to begin with as hospitals test and refine their procedures.
Aurora Health Care, which received more than 5,800 doses of the vaccine on Monday, is not distributing its initial allotment to all of its hospitals.
The health system instead is giving the first vaccines at three hospitals: Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee and its hospitals in Sheboygan and Green Bay.
Aurora St. Luke’s has a freezer capable of storing the vaccine at super-cold temperatures and is daily sending the vaccine to Sheboygan and Green Bay based on the number of workers scheduled to receive it the next day.
Physicians, nurses and other workers who have priority and who work at other Aurora hospitals — such as in Kenosha or Oshkosh — can get the vaccine at those sites.
No one in the Aurora system will be more than an hour’s drive from being able to get the vaccine.
It’s a temporary measure and “will be one of many different vaccine strategies,” said Jane Dus, chief nursing officer for Wisconsin and co-leader of Advocate Aurora Health’s vaccine distribution program.
“As we get more vaccine, our goal is to have vaccine at every one of our sites,” Dus said.
The vaccine can be stored in a basic refrigerator for five days.
But Dus said, “We have to ultra-careful that we maintain this cold chain and not waste vaccine.”
The Moderna vaccine — which was expected to be approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration late Thursday — will be easier to manage.
“We wanted to be very thoughtful and careful,” Dus said. “We do know that we will learn more, we do know that we will get move vaccine and we will make it more widely available at our sites.”
The first people vaccinated at Aurora St. Luke’s this week included a nurse who works at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee and a physician who works at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton. On Thursday, Aurora’s hospitals in Green Bay and Sheboygan gave its first vaccines.
Dus is overjoyed that even limited doses of the vaccine now are available.
“I truly believe this is the ticket to get us out of this pandemic,” Dus said.