Medical personnel work in the emergency department. âAP
Photo/John Minchillo
Hospitals in the Philadelphia region have known their frontline workers would be first in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once it got the green light from the Food and Drug Administration. Until that happened, they werenât just going to sit around and wait.
So hospitals have spent the last few weeks making arrangements â from ultra-cold storage, to prioritizing who goes first, to creating inoculation rotations so they are poised to vaccinate their workers as soon as the first round of doses arrive.
Now that the first vaccine, from Pfizer, has been endorsed by an FDA advisory panel, with emergency use authorization by the agency imminent, shipments will likely arrive in the coming days. Health systems are kicking their plans into gear, scheduling staff members to sign up for their first shots Wednesday and Thursday.
Hospitals in the Philadelphia region have known their frontline workers would be first in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once it got the green light from the Food and Drug Administration. Until that happened, they werenât just going to sit around and wait.
So hospitals have spent the last few weeks making arrangements â from ultra-cold storage, to prioritizing who goes first, to creating inoculation rotations so they are poised to vaccinate their workers as soon as the first round of doses arrive.
Now that the first vaccine, from Pfizer, has been endorsed by an FDA advisory panel, with emergency use authorization by the agency imminent, shipments will likely arrive in the coming days. Health systems are kicking their plans into gear, scheduling staff members to sign up for their first shots Wednesday and Thursday of next week.