Owensboro Health will be receiving its first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine sometime next week. According to officials, an unknown number of Moderna vaccines will be distributed to the regional healthcare center, though the exact date is not known at this time.
However, Director of Marketing Brian Hamby said OH should find out that date soon, and the vaccines will go to frontline healthcare workers based on a variety of circumstances.
“It’s a tiered system that mirrors the state’s tiered system,” Hamby said. “The first doses will go to frontline healthcare workers — those who are directly exposed. They will go to all clinicians as well. There are several other factors taken into consideration — those who are higher risk. A lot depends on how many we get.”
OHRH was not included in the first round of distributions for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — the first to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Commonwealth received exactly 12,675 vials of the Pfizer vaccine, which were distributed to 11 regional hospitals in Louisville, Paducah, Bowling Green, Madisonville, Pikeville, Corbin, Lexington and Edgewood.
Another 25,350 have been delivered to CVS and Walgreens and are set to be distributed in long-term care facilities across the state.
“With Pfizer, we were making plans either way. We’re not sure why we were excluded,” Hamby said. “We’re just trying to make the best of it. I think this is a real step for progress.”
Owensboro Health has also narrowed down the list of who will receive the first vaccines through a survey asking employees if they wanted a vaccine or if they were open to receiving one.
The results from that survey are currently being tabulated, he added.
Though Hamby said receiving a COVID-19 vaccine was a positive step in the right direction, he noted that it was only the start to a new transition period for the virus. Officials don’t know when the public will begin receiving vaccinations, but Hamby guessed it could be spring.
“And it takes several weeks after the second dose of the vaccine to [become immune to the virus],” he said, noting a booster shot is needed two weeks after the initial one. “If we are really going to turn the tide on this pandemic, we must continue to do all of the things we’ve been doing. We know that getting back to normal is a long way ahead, but this is a good first step to turning the corner against this pandemic.”
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