SPRINGFIELD The first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arrived Monday in Illinois, but officials said there’s still a need for social distancing, face coverings and other mitigations as a full rollout could take months.
While Gov. JB Pritzker hailed distribution of the vaccine, manufactured by the drug company Pfizer, as the “beginning of the end” of the pandemic, many questions are still unanswerable as to the timeline of distribution for future shipments and that of a second potential vaccine.
“Today marks only the beginning of the national vaccination rollout,” Pritzker said at his daily briefing Monday in Chicago. “This week the very first recipients of the very first phase will receive their first of two doses of this COVID-19 vaccine. To put it in perspective, in total, Illinois will be receiving about 109,000 doses this week. Nationally, there are approximately 24 million people who the (U.S. Centers for Disease Co
A 6½-foot-tall freezer delivered by the state to Springfield’s HSHS St. John’s Hospital in recent days will make history in the fight against COVID-19.
The “ultra-deep freeze” unit, now plugged in along a wall of the internal pharmacy at the 422-bed nonprofit hospital, will be used to store the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine proven 95% effective in a pandemic that has sickened millions and killed more than 290,000 Americans and almost 14,000 in Illinois.
St. John’s is one of 10 regional hospitals that will coordinate distribution of the initial vaccine shipments to local health departments, contractors, and others administering shots to frontline health care workers and nursing home residents as soon as the week of Dec. 13. The Peoria region is being coordinated by OSF HealthCare, who declined the Journal Star s request for access to the site due to security concerns.
Staff Report
Health care workers were among people receiving the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine across the country Monday.
Illinois received approximately 43,000 vaccine doses in a first shipment and expects additional shipments in the coming weeks, according to a press release from the governor s office. The vast majority of doses in the shipment will be delivered to the 10 regional hubs around the state that will serve as pick up locations for local health departments to begin distribution.
“Today marks a momentous occasion – not just this year, but in American history. Eleven months after scientists the world over first got their hands on the genetic sequence of this virus – and we are seeing the beginning of the end of this pandemic,” said Gov. JB Pritzker. “I want to offer my gratitude not only to the researchers who fueled this moment, but also to all the truck drivers, pilots, logistics specialists, warehouse operations managers, and
HSHS St John s will use ultra-cold freezer to store COVID-19 doses sj-r.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sj-r.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
PEORIA Already on a long and difficult road, David and Julia Hoffman recently found their situation more dire with the addition of COVID-19.
Julia, 59, was diagnosed with kidney failure in September 2019. Living in the Toulon Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, she was getting better and was poised to come home. Then she tested positive for COVID-19 on Thanksgiving.
Today she is on a ventilator at OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center fighting COVID-linked pneumonia, and her husband of 14 years cannot speak with her. He gets updates from the staff there every day, but in the meantime he sits in his Peoria home and waits. Sometimes he writes, posting updates on his Facebook page to his 876 followers. On Dec. 3, he wrote this: