Health care worker vaccinations progress
Gov. Baker says the vast majority of hospitals are vaccinating workers.
More than 70,000 health care workers in Massachusetts who could encounter the coronavirus on the job have received at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and some in Springfield are slated to get the second and final dose this week.
Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito traveled to Baystate Medical Center on Tuesday to highlight vaccine distribution efforts in the western part of the state and strategies the hospital system is taking to encourage its employees and, eventually, its patients to get vaccinated.
By the start of this week, about 287,000 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines had been distributed to providers in Massachusetts and 116,771 doses have been administered, Baker said. Seventy-four of 76 hospitals in the state have started vaccinating their workers (the two Shriners Hospitals for Children opted out of the first round of distribution) and at least 70,000 COVIDfacing health care workers have gotten the shot, the governor said.
“It’s great to see doctors and nurses and health care workers receive their first doses, and to highlight some of that on social media,” Polito said Tuesday. “It not only gives others in terms of your colleagues in the medical profession some insight in terms of how that might feel, but it also was an inspiration to the public at large that these vaccinations are real, they’re rolling out, and they will be near everyone in our commonwealth in a relatively short period of time.”
Dr. Mark Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health, said his organization invited 12,252 people — all of its employees and some hospital-based private providers — to get the vaccine. About 7,600 people have opened their invitation and 6,162 have been given the first vaccine dose. Some of those people are scheduled for their second dose this week, he said. So far, 1,474 people have declined the vaccine, Keroack said.
“But over 60% of those are what I would call the softer variety. That is, people who are not adamantly opposed to vaccinations in general, but rather prefer to wait and see what happens with their friends and colleagues before they themselves step up,” he said.
Keroack called the COVID-19 vaccines “a home run” because both the Moderna and Pfizer formulations have shown to be roughly 95% effective, compared to a flu shot that might be 70% effective in “a really good year.” He said he understands that there is hesitancy and reluctance to accept any supposed expert recommendation and that he is unlikely to change very many minds himself.
“I would say the most effective vaccine acceptance tool we’ve had thus far is the selfie station up at our vaccine center,” Keroack said. “It enables people, once they’ve gotten their shot, to take a selfie, take a small video, make a testimonial, and we then post it on social media so people find out that folks just like them have got the vaccine and are quite happy about it.”
Keroack said Baystate Health’s vaccine center in Holyoke has been able to vaccinate about 850 people a day. He said mild sore arms have been a common side effect of the vaccine but that flu-like symptoms have been “surprisingly uncommon,” having shown up in just 2% of people vaccinated.
Of the more than 6,000 people already vaccinated at Baystate Health, Keroack said fewer than 10 have had an allergic reaction to the vaccine and that all reactions were taken care of successfully with standard treatments that are on hand at the vaccine center.
Baystate Health has administered more doses of the Moderna vaccine than it has the Pfizer vaccine, but Keroack said there is really no difference between the two.
“It’s a coin flip,” he said of the shots’ effectiveness..