Anepic vaccination campaign against the deadly coronavirus pandemic began in theUS Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves to get their first shots ofthe Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine even as the country's death toll inched towards300,000 and total cases crossed 16 million in just 11 months.
"Ifeel hopeful today. Relieved," critical case nurse Sandra Lindsay saidafter she became the first New Yorker to get the Covid-19 shot at Long IslandJewish Medical Center in New York.
"Ifeel like healing is coming," Lindsay said, as her history-making momentplayed on live TV. After her injection site was sealed with a band aid, Lindsayurged Americans to mask up, stay the course and get vaccinated when their timecomes.
"Hopefullysoon! I'm first on the list!", read a text message Monday morning from DrKrishan Kumar, an Indian American doctor on the frontlines of the pandemicresponse in New York City. Excitement and a sense of relief are palpable as thefirst Covid-19 shots go into the arms of healthcare workers and nursing homeresidents in the US.
Kumarworks in the emergency rooms of two hospitals, in Brooklyn and in Queens.
OnMonday, hospital workers across 50 states began unloading precious cargo: thefirst vials of nearly 3 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccinewhich mark the shift towards real recovery from a virus that has upendedAmerican life and hammered the economy.
ThePfizer vaccine is being transported from Pfizer's Kalamazoo, Michigan, factoryin massive trucks with dry ice packaging that allows it to stay at ultra-frozentemperatures.
Onthe night of December 11, US regulators approved emergency use of the Pfizerand BioNTech vaccine for people aged 16 years and older, based onrecommendations from an independent vaccine advisory committee which debatedfor over nine hours before ending on a 17-4 vote. The shots are yet to bestudied in children and in pregnant women.
"Pleasepeople, when you look back in a year and you say to yourself, 'Did I do theright thing?' I hope you'll be able to say, 'Yes, because I looked at theevidence,'" Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes ofHealth, said in public comments on Sunday.
"Peopleare dying right now. How could you possibly say, 'Let's wait and see.'"