COLUMBUS (WCMH) – With the first round of COVID-19 vaccines in transit, Tuesday is shaping up to be a big day for some central Ohio healthcare workers.
Ohio is set to receive 89,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and out of those, a total of 15,000 tier one workers will get the first shots Tuesday.
“We’ve been planning for this for months,” said Dr. Joseph Gastaldo, an infectious disease expert with OhioHealth.
“The first group are those living in extended care facilities,” he said. “When you look at a large percentage of people who have died from COVID-19, it’s nursing home residents. The second group within healthcare workers are healthcare workers who are involved in taking care of COVID-19 patients.”
This second group includes people who deliver food to COVID-19 patients, or anyone supporting the care of those patients.
“We have told everybody this: ‘We have to ask for everybody’s understanding and patience,’” Gastaldo said, adding this is especially important as OhioHealth and other vaccine faciliators have to focus on how they store the vaccines and meeting the six-hour deadline before the vaccine is no longer considered “good” to administer.
“When the vaccine arrives, it needs to be stored in -75 degrees Celsius and those are not regular freezers,” Gastaldo said.
Over at Mt. Carmel Hospital, according to Dr. Mark Herbert, healthcare workers there will have to wait an extra week until the hospital gets its vaccine shipment in, but on Monday, hospital administrators will announce their full plan for administering the vaccine.
“We’re supposed to get our first subsets of the tiers on Monday and then we will know which group we are in,” Herbert said.
He said one of the biggest questions asked at Mt. Carmel is how the vaccine will be administered in the healthcare setting.
“I know there are some plans to do drive-throughs and other plans that are yet not finalized,” Herbert said.
OhioHealth has not received a specific time for when the vaccines will be delivered Monday, but they do want to remind everyone that it will be a while before the vaccine is available to the general public, so they urge everyone to continue wearing a mask and staying socially distant.