At 8:10 a.m. Tuesday, with a single needle prick to nurse Maritza Beniquez s arm, New Jersey began its counterattack on a virus that has killed more than 17,000 of its residents, crippled whole sectors of its economy and shattered the routines of everyone from preschoolers to nursing home residents.
The shot felt ‘round the state came 286 days after the first patient in New Jersey was diagnosed with the coronavirus disease and nearly a year after reports of a previously unknown disease emerged from central China.
It was administered at University Hospital in Newark, located in the hardest-hit county of this hard-hit state. Since March, the hospital has discharged more than 1,200 coronavirus patients, seen 269 die and lost 11 of its staff members to the disease, including one just last week.
Hopewell Township green lights appointment of medical director
Hopewell Township green lights appointment of medical director
The Hopewell Township Committee has approved the appointment of a medical director to potentially oversee public COVID-19 vaccinations if the township were to become a local provider.
Committee members appointed Dr. Stephen Vetrano of Physicians Practice Enhancement LLC at a township committee meeting on Dec. 14.
“Basically we need someone willing to sign all the documents that are coming through the township should we want to be involved with the vaccine rollout,” Mayor Kristin McLaughlin said. “We need to; we have citizens who need the vaccine.”
By CHUCK O DONNELL
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital personnel unpacking the COVID-19 vaccine.
Credits: Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
By CHUCK O DONNELL
December 15, 2020 at 1:26 PM
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - The first staff members at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick will receive the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at an event scheduled for this afternoon.
The hospital commemorated the historic day by taking video of personnel carefully unpacking the vaccine and putting it into storage earlier today.
At 8:10 a.m., Maritza Beniquez, a resident nurse at the University Hospital emergency department in Newark, became the first New Jerseyan to receive the coronavirus vaccine outside the clinical trials.
Credit: (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen)
File photo: New Jersey’s COVID-19 vaccination programs begins Tuesday, Dec. 15. New York’s began Dec. 14. Pharmacists arrived with the vaccine at NYU-Langone Hospital on Monday.
With several New Jersey hospitals on Tuesday slated to begin vaccinating health care workers against COVID-19 and more than 300,000 more doses anticipated in the weeks to come, the state is poised to enter a new and potentially more effective phase in its battle against the deadly coronavirus.
But these early shipments provide only the first of two shots needed to protect just over half of the group designated the highest priority some 650,000 paid and unpaid health care workers and 75,000 long-term care residents. New Jersey officials stressed it will be months still before the vaccine is available to the general public and almost a year before we reach so-called herd immunity, at which point enough people are vaccinated to properly control the spread of the virus.
Here are N.J.’s safest hospitals. See how yours fared in new national report.
Updated Dec 15, 2020;
Posted Dec 15, 2020
St. Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston, N.J. is the only hospital in the state to receive straight-A s in the Leapfrog safety report card since the surveys began in 2012.
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New Jersey hospitals rank 17th best in the nation for safety, a drop from eighth place a year ago and a potentially troubling sign as the pandemic continues to make unrelenting demands on healthcare professionals, according to the latest Leapfrog Hospital Safety report card.
Six hospitals went up a grade while 15 hospitals went down a grade, according to an analysis by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, a consumer, research nonprofit that jointly releases the report with Leapfrog.