Print article David Donahue, a respiratory therapist at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, sat next to nurse Emily Schubert on Tuesday morning and rolled up his sleeve. This week marks a historic turning point in Alaska’s battle with COVID-19 as some of the state’s first vaccines were administered to frontline healthcare workers. “The hopes and dreams are that we see enough people get the vaccine that the spread backs off,” Donahue said. Donahue is one of the small number of people who have now begun the process for inoculation for the first time since the disease began infecting and killing Alaskans in March. The state on Sunday evening received its first shipment of vaccines from drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine for emergency use last week.