Five Deborah Heart and Lung Center healthcare workers walked into the auditorium with blank expressions on their faces.
They were about to take the COVID-19 vaccine Thursday at their Pemberton workplace, and they were nervous, they said. But then they sat down at different tables around the room, took their shots and smiled.
Several Deborah executives, administrators and other employees also attended the event in the auditorium, and they started clapping once the shots were done and the bandages were on.
With that, the first COVID vaccinations in Burlington County were complete.
Jenni Blood, a respiratory therapist, Sharon Corbett, a unit coordinator, Carolyn German, a nurse, Dr. Michael Neary, an anesthesiologist and Tina Welz, an environmental services employee, were the five Deborah healthcare workers who took the initial doses.
UpdatedFri, Dec 18, 2020 at 10:02 am ET
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The limits on visitors remain in most Garden State hospitals, as the pandemic s second wave has kept them in the red zone. (Ashley Ludwig/Patch)
NEW JERSEY - The limits on visitors remain in most Garden State hospitals, as the COVID-19 pandemic s second wave has kept them in the red zone.
Months ago, hospitals across the state in adopting visitation guidelines from the New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA). This standardized policy for hospital visitation provides color codes based on the level of virus risk (virus risk is determined by COVID-19 levels in the community, the level of COVID-19 patients at each hospital, staffing levels, and inventories of PPE supplies).
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Funda Dalkirmaz, a registered nurse in the emergency department at Shore Medical Center, was the first on her staff to receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. She couldn t hide her enthusiasm when talking with Press of Atlantic City, saying, I m really, really happy. I ve been waiting for this. I ve been telling everybody to vaccinate. I m a very pro-vaccine person. I m in the military, so I get vaccines a lot.
Learn more about today’s exciting first distribution of the COVID vaccine and the #ShoreHealthcareHeroes who received it in this article by the Press of AC!
COVID-19 Patients In More Than 20 Percent Of County Hospital Beds patch.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from patch.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Jose F. Moreno/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
The need for widespread vaccination against Covid-19 is urgent experts say about 60 percent of people need to be vaccinated to see the vaccine’s effect on the disease that has claimed the lives of more than 300,000 Americans. But the country must first surmount a considerable challenge: convincing many everyday Americans, not just skeptics, to get vaccinated.
This challenge will be doubly tough in Black and brown communities, where the coronavirus has disproportionately decimated families and where distrust of government and medical institutions remains high.
In November, Pew found that Black adults are “much less likely to say they would get a vaccine than other Americans.” Only 32 percent of Black adults say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine, compared with 52 percent of white respondents, 56 percent of Hispanic respondents, and about 72 percent of Asian respondents, according to Pew. Similarly, the Kaiser Fam