• Allegheny COVID-19 cases top 69K,
Forest Hills personal care home residents, workers get first COVID-19 shots
The shot? Meh.
“It’s like any other needle I’ve ever had to take,” a nonchalant Ruth Lindner said Saturday. “It was no problem for me.”
Worried about getting COVID19? Not so much.
“When you get to be my age — I’ll be 98 — I’ve gone through so much already that I tolerate it.”
But not having to fear passing a deadly virus on to others, like her two sons and granddaughters?
“This is something that I need to do in order to protect other people around me, and I just feel that’s what I should do, and I do it.”
Ms. Lindner on Saturday became the first of the residents of Juniper Village at Forest Hills, a personal care home, to get the initial dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
“I was so glad to get it,” said Ms. Lindner, a resident at Juniper Village since 2017, who has lived in the Hill District, Squirrel Hill, Churchill and now Forest Hills (“I didn’t miss a hill,” she said).
After nearly a year of “window visits,” during which her small family, two at a time, would chat on a cellphone with her, separated by a glass pane, Ms. Lindner is ready for the prospect of some hugs and human touch.
“You do feel lonely sometimes, but this is a wonderful facility, and they do keep us fairly active. I manage,” Ms. Lindner said. “I’ll make myself busy doing something because that’s the only way for me to get over the feeling of loneliness. You have to help yourself.”
At 10 a.m., almost all of Juniper Village’s 70 residents and 65 staff members began an orderly procession into the main lobby, where they were inoculated in pairs by nurses and CVS workers.
Afterward the seniors got snack bags while waiting out the 15 minutes to ensure they didn’t suffer an adverse reaction. Then it was time for a pizza party.
A handful of seniors and staff were unable to get the vaccine for medical reasons, Juniper Village spokeswoman Bonnie Caripolti said. Those who got the shots ranged in age from an 18-year-old resident care aide to a 100-year-old resident, she said.
Juniper Village did well for much of 2020 in avoiding the coronavirus, Ms. Caripolti said. It wasn’t until November, she said, that the facility saw its first cases: nine residents and 11 staff, all mild.
The most recent state report on the virus in personal care homes, as of Jan. 21, shows no data available for Juniper Village, making it one of many personal care homes for which COVID-19 data is not listed. Juniper Village said it had been submitting its data to county and state agencies and could not
Saturday.
As preparations were underway to get the vaccination clinic going, Ms. Caripolti was ready for her own shot.
“I’m excited,” she said. “Everybody’s excited about getting back on with their lives.”
Family members of residents had been calling “off the hook” to see if they would be able to get vaccinated, too, she said.
The answer: possibly. Ms. Caripolti said if there were any doses left over after the residents and staff were inoculated, they were going to be offered to families. She acknowledged that such a move would fall outside of state Department of Health guidelines, but she noted that there also is a push to ensure that vaccines do not go unused. All told, Juniper Village was on track to provide 190 injections to residents, staff, family members and those who Ms. Caripolti referred to as “care partners,” people who come into the facility to perform various tasks.
The second round of immunizations is scheduled for Feb. 20.
While the Saturday clinic marked an important step toward being able to restore in-person visits, there is still a hill left to climb. Visits won’t resume instantaneously.
“There are variants, there are new strains, there are outsiders that haven’t been vaccinated,” Ms. Caripolti said.
However long it takes, there is now real hope for the residents. Ms. Lindner acknowledged that she was excited for some hugs with her family.
“Oh, boy, you’d better believe it,” she said.
Asked about her thoughts on the scourge of the coronavirus, especially considering that the 1918 influenza pandemic happened just before she was born, Ms. Lindner offered this perspective:
“No words to explain it, and there are no words to explain the negative attitude some people have by rejecting what they tell you to — wearing a mask, washing your hands. That amazes me. This is what it is. Deal with it, don’t ignore it, don’t be afraid of it. Some people say they don’t believe in medicines, they don’t believe in this. You have to believe in something.”