COVID-19 vaccine arrives at LVHN and St. Luke’s
Health care workers gets shots soon afterward
In the moments leading up to her COVID-19 vaccine, tears welled up in Chantal Branco’s eyes. Not because she was going to be the first Lehigh Valley Health Network employee to get the shot, but because she was talking about her fellow nurses whoare working on the frontline of the pandemic.
“My team is so unbelievably strong and resilient,” Branco, a registered nurse, said. “They work so hard, every day, good days, bad days, more bad than good lately. I’m just so incredibly proud of them and proud to lead them.”
The first shipments of the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for emergency use arrived in the Lehigh Valley around noon
Thursday. Both LVHN and St. Luke’s University Health Network began to vaccinate employees that afternoon.
Branco was the first LVHN employee to get the vaccine and nine others followed, in a jubilant moment that aired live on Facebook. At St. Luke’s, registered nurse Sonia Iparraguirre was the first employee vaccinated, with a few others vaccinated that afternoon.
Branco said she wasn’t sure why she was picked to be the first, but she was honored nonetheless. She added the vaccine is a clear sign that we are on the path to some form of normalcy, something she and other nurses want desperately.
COVID-19 has been a fixture in Branco’s life since the beginning of 2020. She is the unit director of 2K South at LVH-Cedar Crest, the first coronavirus critical care unit LVHN opened at the hospital. But even before then, as early as January, she said, she was doing preparation work for when the pandemic hit the Lehigh Valley.
For the 10-year veteran critical care nurse, 2020 has been the most challenging year of her career.
“It’s been very painful, there’s been immense loss,” Branco said. “I’ve always worked in critical care. You expect people to be sick, you expect some won’t survive — what I’ve seen the last year is horrible.”
At St. Luke’s, Iparraguirre cared for the first COVID-19 patient there and has remained on the front line.
“I am so happy to be part of this momentous step to end the pandemic,” she said in a news release. The vaccine is safe, she said, and will protect not only individuals but whole communities.
Branco said she feels lucky. Despite constantly being surrounded by those stricken with the highly infectious virus, she’s never contracted COVID19, which she attributed to her personal protective equipment. She isn’t as concerned about herself as she is about bringing the virus home with her. She said her fear has been that she’d get her sons, Jaxon, 5, and Maxell, 18 months, sick.
Though the vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel, Branco cautioned that people can’t get complacent about the virus. The vaccine won’t be available to the general public for months to come, and Banco asked that everyone continue to wear a mask, social distance, avoid large gatherings and follow all other guidelines to help slow the spread.
Though Branco was the first LVHN employee to get the approved vaccine, she wasn’t the first to be injected. LVHNparticipated in the Pfizer vaccine’s clinical trial, with 75 of its staff volunteering.
Dr. Joseph Yozniak, an LVHN physician and the principal investigator for the network’s participation in the clinical trial, said the vaccine is different from most others in two ways: it requires two doses, three weeks apart; and it is the first mRNA vaccine approved for use by the FDA. Unlike typical vaccines made from viruses, Pfizer’s uses messenger RNA to trigger an immune response.
Yozniak said though Pfizer’s vaccine is novel, it is safe and the only people known to be at potential risk are those whohave histories of serious allergic reactions to vaccines. Even those people, he said, may want to talk to their doctor about getting the shot because it is done where medical professionals could quickly address an allergic reaction.