Covid Vaccine: The emergency authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday night has set off a frenzy of preparations at hospitals and doctors’ offices across the United States. Among them is Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in the New York region, once the coronavirus epicenter in the United States.
Organizing the receipt and further distribution of the vaccine is a mammoth task. Northwell has set up nine vaccination centers equipped with ultracold freezers at or near its hospitals in Manhattan, Staten Island, Westchester County and Long Island, and plans to start vaccinating tens of thousands of employees as soon as the vaccine shipments arrive, probably on Monday, said Dr. Mark Jarrett, Northwell’s chief quality officer.
The health system, which has 56,000 employees who interact with patients, has already received shipments of kits with supplies for administering the vaccine, including syringes, alcohol swabs and gloves.
Northwell expects to have all of its workers — not just care providers like doctors and nurses, but also others such as cleaning personnel who work in intensive care units and patient rooms — vaccinated within five weeks with the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccines, Dr. Jarrett said.
Employees will be given appointments to come in for shots so they won’t have to stand in line and can maintain social distancing. A backup list of additional recipients will be drawn up in case anyone has to cancel an appointment at the last minute.
“The one thing we don’t want to do is ever waste vaccine,” Dr. Jarrett said. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is transported on dry ice, has to be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, and then prepared for use.
“Once you’ve defrosted and diluted it, you only have six hours to use it,” Dr. Jarrett said. “You want to certainly use every dose that’s in a vial.”
The health system is carefully scheduling employees for vaccination in various units and hospitals to prevent staffing problems from overburdening any single unit. The idea is to evenly spread staff out in case they have adverse reactions to the shot — such as fever, fatigue or muscle pain — that require them to stay home from work.
That will be even more important when the second dose of the vaccine is administered, three weeks after the first shot; the rate of side effects among clinical trial participants was reported to be higher after the second dose of the vaccine.
Priority will be given to older employees and those who make a request because of medical conditions that leave them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, Dr. Jarrett said.
No employee will be forced to take the vaccine, Dr. Jarrett said — a decision influenced in part by the fact that the vaccine received an emergency use authorization and has not gone through the F.D.A.’s standard approval process. But he expects demand to be high.
“There will be a certain percentage who are afraid to take the vaccine,” he said. “After they see team members get it and be fine, I suspect most of those will then decide to take it.”
— Roni Caryn Rabin The New York Times