HEALTH CARE WORKERS GET FIRST COVID-19 VACCINATIONS
SANTA CRUZ >> Health care workers stood in line Wednesday morning to get their COVID-19 vaccinations at Dominican Hospital — the first in the county to have a dose administered.
At 11 a.m., seven doctors and nurses in personal protective equipment rolled up their sleeves to receive the first of two doses of the preventative measure.
“( It’s) to help us get the process down before jumping into broadscale employee vaccination tomorrow,” Dominican Hospital spokeswoman Claire Henry said of starting out with just seven employees.
The County of Santa Cruz distributed its allocation of the Pfizer vaccine to Dominican Hospital and Watsonville Community Hospital on Tuesday. Dominican was the first of the two to facilitate vaccinations Wednesday.
According to his wife, Watsonv ille Communit y Hospital’s ER Chief Dr. John Walther will join the group of vaccinated health care workers in Santa Cruz County when he receives a vaccination Wednesday
afternoon. Walther, who has been a physician and director at the Watsonville hospital for nearly 40 years, will be vaccinated in the facility’s Community Room.
“Dr. Walther guided Watsonville Hospital through the 1989 ( Loma Prieta) Earthquake and initiated the task force to address COVID early on in the 2020 pandemic,” his wife, Laura
Broderick, said Wednesday morning. “(He) is a true hero, and now is the time to say thank you.”
Lisa Nell of Watsonville Community Hospital confirmed the vaccinations would take place, four health care workers will receive a vaccine.
On Tuesday, just after Santa Cruz County received 1,950 doses of the vaccine, Gov. Gavin Newsom said
during a press conference that four counties had received doses Monday, 24 were receiving them Tuesday and five more would receive them Wednesday. Getting the vaccine to all areas of California is the goal of the “Vaccinate All 58” campaign, a campaign for “safe, fair and equitable” vaccines for all 58 counties in the state.
The state will continue to pursue as many doses of the Pfizer vaccine as possible to prioritize vaccinating those workers most frequently exposed, such as health care workers and first responders. In addition, it eagerly awaits the FDA approval of a second COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna — an event that could happen as soon as this week, the governor said.
The Pfizer vaccine, for
mally known as the PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, is injected into the deltoid muscle twice. According to the CDC, the two doses are separated by 21 days and they must both be the same brand (for example, a Pfizer dose cannot be substituted for a Moderna dose and vice versa). A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that vaccine efficacy between the first and second doses was 52%. Seven or more days after the second dose, efficacy rose to 95% on average.
In the Bay Area, county
health officers are banding together this week to support the state’s vaccine distribution guidelines prioritizing health care workers in acute care facilities and emphasized that there are multiple “key steps” to fighting the coronavirus beyond the vaccine.
“Those key steps to fight the pandemic include public health work to protect highrisk groups and health care workers, identifying and isolating cases and also tracing and quarantining contacts,” the experts said in a prepared statement. “For the public, that means
wearing face coverings and avoiding gatherings, postponing travel and staying home whenever possible.”
Vaccines for the general public are predicted to be available in the early summer.
“In Santa Cruz County, we have all made sacrifices to slow the spread of the vi
rus and adapt to a new normal,” Santa Cruz County Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel said Tuesday. “The next steps in our pandemic response are widespread vaccinations and community recovery. The delivery of these safe and effective vaccines is a welcome step in that direction.”