Michelle Budzyn, assistant director of pharmacy services; Ronald Szklanny, inventory control specialist; and Kelly Bolesta, director of pharmacy services, open a delivery of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center on Tuesday.
Courtesy of Geisinger
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Kelly Bolesta, director of pharmacy services at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center, unpacks the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine after its arrival at Geisinger Wyoming Valley on Tuesday.
Courtesy of Geisinger
Kelly Bolesta, director of pharmacy services, counts the vials of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine delivered Tuesday to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center.
Courtesy of Geisinger
Kelly Bolesta, director of pharmacy services, and Ronald Szklanny, inventory control specialist, place a tray of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine into a refrigerator at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center.
Courtesy of Geisinger
WILKES-BARRE — Geisinger Wyoming Valley was one of seven Pennsylvania hospitals to receive a shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday afternoon, and the first in Luzerne County, with health care workers the intended recipients.
“Each day, hospitals will be shipped vaccine directly from Pfizer and will begin administering it to health care workers at the hospital,” state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Tuesday.
In alignment with Pennsylvania Department of Health and federal guidelines, during this initial phase, vaccinations will be reserved for front-line staff whose daily work involves significant interactions with COVID-19 patients and other staff in critical departments.
Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital in Mifflin County was among the other recipients on Tuesday. More vaccine doses from this initial shipment are expected to arrive at Geisinger Medical Center later this week, with eligible employees recieving the vaccinations within 24 hours of arrival, hospital officials said.
St. Luke’s University Health Network is also expected to receive a shipment sometime this week.
Geisinger has a webpage with information about the vaccine at gesinger.org/COVIDvax.
The other Pennsylvania hospitals that received a shipment of the vaccine on Tuesday are:
• Doylestown Hospital, Doylestown (Bucks County)
• Evangelical Community Hospital, Lewisburg (Union County)
• Titusville Area Hospital, Titusville (Crawford County)
• UPMC-Presbyterian Hospital, Pittsburgh (Allegheny County)
• WellSpan Good Samaritan Hospital, Lebanon (Lebanon County)
These seven hospitals are the first of an expected 87 hospitals to receive the vaccine throughout the week, according to the Department of Health.
“The 87 hospitals receiving shipments this week enrolled to be COVID-19 vaccine providers,” Levine said. “The federal government has determined the amount of vaccine and when the vaccine is distributed.”
The hospitals were chosen based on their ability to accomodate and manage the ultra-low temperature storage requirements needed to house the vaccine.
The vaccine will be administered in three phases, with the first phase consisting primarily of health care personnel and first responders as well as residents of long-term care facilities.
“These first doses of vaccine are being given specifically to health care workers through hospitals,” Levine said. “Hospitals are making arrangements to implement these vaccinations, not only to their own frontline staff but to other high-priority recipients.”
National rollout
Hundreds more hospitals around the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots to their workers in a rapid expansion of the U.S. vaccination drive Tuesday, while a second vaccine moved to the cusp of government authorization.
A day after the rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus shots, the Food and Drug Administration said its preliminary analysis confirmed the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health. A panel of outside experts is expected to recommend the formula on Thursday, with the FDA’s green light coming soon thereafter.
The Moderna vaccine uses the same technology as Pfizer-BioNTech’s and showed similarly strong protection against COVID-19 but is easier to handle because it does not need to be kept in the deep freeze at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
Another weapon against the outbreak can’t come soon enough: The number of dead in the U.S. passed a staggering 300,000 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University, with about 2,400 people now dying per day on average.
Packed in dry ice, shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine began arriving Tuesday at more than 400 additional hospitals and other distribution sites.
The first 3 million shots are being strictly rationed to front-line health workers and nursing home patients, with hundreds of millions more shots needed over the coming months to protect most Americans.
The rollout provided a measure of encouragement to exhausted doctors, nurses and other hospital staffers around the country.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.