Almost nine months to the day after Ascension hospital in Franklin received its first COVID-19 patient, Pharmacy Manager Mike Gillard filled a syringe with vaccine to inoculate colleagues against the disease that has already killed more than 305,000 Americans. It s a historical moment for everybody, Gillard said Wednesday. Hopefully this will help turn the corner on the pandemic, and get people back to some sense of normalcy.
The vaccine, developed in record time by Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, is being distributed slowly to begin with, as hospitals test and refine their procedures.
State health officials reported that slightly fewer than 200 people in Wisconsin had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of noon Wednesday.