UMC issued the following statement.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center’s fight against the spread of COVID-19 got hundreds of shots in the arm today, as the vaccination of front-line employees began.
"This feels like a day of celebration and a day of some good news,” said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, during a new conference “We have had, this year, a few opportunities to share good news, but when it comes to this pandemic, there is nothing that has compared to today, when we are finally able to distribute vaccine to some of our employees. This is what I hope and pray and believe is a turning point in our experience with this pandemic. I think this is how we are going to get through to the other side.
The Medical Center’s allotment of 780 vials of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech – enough for 3,900 doses – arrived Monday and has been stored in an ultra-cold freezer on the UMMC campus in preparation for vaccinations this week.
“Today represents a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Dr. Alan Jones, assistant vice chancellor for clinical affairs. “Usually I talk about how many ICU beds we’re down and how we’re tired, and while that’s all true, I feel like there’s been a shot of energy imparted into our staff today, because we finally feel like we have something to offer each other and the community to get us to the other side of this pandemic.”
Shipment and storage of the vials has “posed a pretty significant logistical challenge, not just for the Medical Center but for all of the state and around the country,” said Jonathan Wilson, chief administrative officer. “This vaccine from Pfizer arrived in ultra-cold storage in a special shipping container with dry ice to maintain a low temperature. It also contained a GPS tracker and a thermometer so that UPS and FedEx could monitor the status of the shipment. Once it arrived, our Department of Pharmacy removed it from the dry ice container and into an ultra-cold freezer.”
One of the benefits of being an academic medical center, Wilson said, is that its research and clinical laboratories already had the freezers required.
UMMC employees have been granted the option to receive the vaccine through a tiered system with those designated as highest risk – for example, those coming in daily contact with known or suspected COVID-19 patients – given highest priority. At this time only highest risk employees are eligible to schedule vaccination appointments.
An employee COVID-19 vaccine clinic started operations this afternoon in the lobby area of the Blair E. Batson Tower at Children’s of Mississippi. The former lobby for the children’s hospital has not been in use since November and is separated from Children’s of Mississippi patients and their families by temporary walls.
The COVID-19 vaccine clinic includes 10 private cubicles where the vaccine is administered. Each hour, up to six vaccinations can be given in each cubicle for a maximum of 60 inoculations per hour.
The COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory for UMMC employees, but it is strongly encouraged by Medical Center leadership. Proper mask usage, along with handwashing, social distancing and other COVID-19 precautions, will still be required after employees receive the vaccine.
Woodward said the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine does not mean that the community should stop following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines such as wearing face masks and social distancing, aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine showed 95 percent efficacy against COVID-19 after two doses taken 21 days apart. The vaccine prompts the body’s immune system to create antibodies against COVID-19 just as if the person had been exposed, using messenger RNA, or mRNA. The vaccine does not include live virus.
Dr. Bhagyashri Navalkele, medical director for Infection Prevention, was the first front line provider at UMMC to receive the vaccine. Viewers of a town hall livestream this morning were able to see her receiver her vaccination in real time.
“The reason I decided that I needed to get this vaccine is based on science,” she said. “I completely believe and have full confidence in those clinical trials, which were performed by the Pfizer-BioNTech research scientists. It has shown that this vaccine is extremely effective, 95 percent after the second dose, and it is extremely safe.”
Dr. Andrew Wilhelm, associate professor of pulmonary medicine and medical director of UMMC’s medical intensive care unit, was vaccinated not long after. “This feels good,” he said. “It feels like we have made a significant step toward ending this pandemic.”
Woodward received her vaccination on Monday from the Mississippi Department of Health.
“I didn’t feel anything,” she said of the injection. “I had a little bit of arm soreness afterward, but less than the soreness from my most recent flu shot.”
Driscoll DeVaul, director of respiratory therapy, received the vaccine this morning and encouraged others to get the vaccine when it becomes available.
“Stopping the pandemic requires using all of the resources available,” he said. “The current vaccine that we have and following the CDC guidelines gives us the best chance to provide the best care possible in a safe way to our patient and also to protect ourselves and our families.”
23 comments:
Can’t wait to see how many more talking heads skip to the front of the line, “for the good of the public”...
I do not begrudge anyone who works there, janitor, trash collector, parking lot attendant. The bigger the wig, the better it looks, and the more Joe Sixpack is likely to line up and get his too.
It's not over until the herd is immune and we're immunizing the herd . . . or, as many head as will stand for two shots.
Since Kingfish has put up 2236 separate threads about Covid Wuhan on this blog, the least he can do is post a photo of himself being injected.
Like sending the FNG over the top first. Gotta see how it goes.
Maybe after treating health care workers, their families, and their friends there will be some left over for nursing homes where people actually are dying from this disease.
Just wait until their ears stat to fall off
Ah, 6:50...What do you call people who are employed by nursing homes? That's right...Healthcare Workers.
https://www.history.com/news/1918-flu-pandemic-never-ended?cmpid=email-hist-inside-history-2020-1216-12162020&om_rid=&~campaign=hist-inside-history-2020-1216
Bet mankind makes it this time as well. Suck it up my little darlings, life is something you never really have control over. Have a Merry Christmas by the way.
Forgot to add this for History buffs. Population in America was roughly 5+mill at the time.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fever-major-american-epidemics-of-yellow-fever/
Has the black market started yet? (Can we even use that term on here?)
Healthcare workers' families and friends don't get a ticket to the front of the line. My wife is an RN on the COVID floor of UMMC. She gets her shot later this week. I am just a regular Joe and have to wait until April/May when it becomes available to the general public.
Attn. 7:38 At which nursing home do you work? And, where did you get your shot?????
@8:20, hope y’all are done having kids. Hope you don’t mind cancer switches being flipped that modern medicine can’t turn off.
What happened to the ferrets after being vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine?
Antibodies were formed, no adverse effects....winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Then the "challenge test" whereby they were exposed to the virus. What happened? THEY DIED! Overwhelming cytokine storms! Total immune system overreaction! And you can see NIH Director Collins on an older 60 Minutes program admitting the problem of "enhanced immune response". Has Fauci informed you of this? Dobbs? It's why he faked taking the shot. Confront him!
9:55 Nice quote from conspiracy theory website Lew Rockwell that has nothing to do with the approved COVID-19 vaccines. The results from one study two decades ago don't taint vaccine development forever.
The reality now is both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been safely tested in animals as well as tens of thousands of people, hundreds of who were exposed to the virus with no significant adverse results attributable to the vaccine.
Loosen the tin-foil hat a little bit.
If this vaccine is so great why must the inoculated continue to wear their mask and social distance?
"If this vaccine is so great why must the inoculated continue to wear their mask and social distance?" We must all do per the edicts of the Great St. Anthony says.
11:51 Because at this point we don't have enough evidence to show the vaccine completely prevents infection. The results show 95% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic illness and 100% effectiveness in preventing severe complication, but there hasn't been enough testing to see if a vaccinated person could still pass the virus on to someone else who hasn't had the vaccine and cause them to get severely ill or die.
Until we know for sure a vaccinated person cannot spread the disease then mask wearing will still be recommended to protect those that have not gotten vaccinated yet.
Man we have a lot of medical experts on this blog!!!
3:24 Or maybe, just maybe, we have people who are genuinely concerned about the situation, research the available published information, and listen to the actual experts rather than depending on Facebook conspiracy theories and chiropractors pretending to be epidemiologists.
For example, the poster at 11:51 obviously didn't really care about their question. The answer is readily available with a Google search. I literally cut-and-pasted their question into Google and got this as the first result that answered it. They didn't want an answer, they wanted to sow doubt and confusion about the vaccine.
https://people.com/health/why-still-need-wear-mask-after-getting-covid-vaccine/
I'm not a medical expert, but I'm smart enough to listen to those that are.
My husband is the administrator of a hospital. He wanted the health care workers and others who actually had direct contact with COVID infected patients to be able to take the vaccination first. Not that he is scared of it , he will take it when there is enough but UMMC administrators as usual believe they are GODS and deserve to be protected first and foremost even though they probably have not been near an actual patient
Sometimes Fiction comes true...only time will tell..if made to take the vaccine, I want it at the same time Bill Gates takes it, from the same vial & needle.
Read Tom Clancy....Rainbow Six...about extreme climate elites saving the earth from humanity by biological terrorism, then using a vaccine to finish the job..made a lot of people in the environmental lobby mad.
Harry Cline 1 | Feb 06, 2013...Rainbow Six Review
Shortly after that [Reading Book] I went to the California Weed Science Society annual meeting where I was asked to speak on the history of "Roundup Ready alfalfa"**** & my “fondness” for environmental whackos, comparing them to those who protested smallpox & polio vaccines. In talking to people afterward who have encountered similar disturbed environmental whackos, it made Clancy’s eco-terrorism plot seem plausible.
A friend talked about how he has seen starving children in impoverished nations who could be helped by advancement in biotechnology, yet environmentalists object to the technology & ignore the needs of millions of hungry people. It convinced me there are radical environmentalists who are willing to put plants & animals ahead of people, as difficult as that is to swallow. Not all the so-called environmentalists are that demented.
https://www.farmprogress.com/blog/tom-clancy-s-rainbow-six-chillingly-plausible-look-radical-environmentalists
****There seem to be quite a lot of Attorneys advertising for clients who used Roundup Herbicide & also Talcum Powder.
Clancy also wrote about a 911 style attack on the Washington DC, 10 years before it occurred....and before he became a 100 million Dollar bestselling Author, he sold insurance for his father in law. He might still be alive, had SOS Colin Powell not introduced his 23 year old cousin Alexandra Llewellyn (20 years junior), whom Clancy left his family of 28 years for in 1998. His new wife is still fighting, trying to wrest the Billion dollar Franchise from any control of his 1st wife & children.
https://nation.time.com/2013/10/02/4-real-life-events-predicted-by-tom-clancy/
@4:02 PM on masks. And I do wear a mask, but I wear the same mask Joe Biden wears, a N99, not made in China. I just don't try to hide the fact with a blue surgical bacteria mask over it.
Anyone who is competent with the Dewey Decimal System & understands the metric system #s can figure the Mask issue out. A cloth Mask is useless, IF you believe the pandemic is real. N95s are made for painters & drywall finishers. The only medical use for N95s prior to Covid were on Tuberculosis Patients, to prevent bacteria from being coughed into the Room atmosphere. Viruses are 100x smaller than bacteria.
Try Dr. Scott Jensen, also a Minnesota Senator. Multiple videos.
Covid Particle Size..The Truth about Masks
https://youtu.be/7_b0AhqvAVw
I read an analogy...would you help harvest honey from beehives using headgear made of chicken wire? Would You put up Chain link fence on your back porch to keep mosquitoes out?
The NIH studies are out there from the SARs outbreak. N95s don't protect from viruses ...much less a cloth mask. 2 NIH published studies published show the Covid Virus size.
The human eye can see a 50 micron hair. Aerosols are defined as 5 microns. N95 woven, electrostatic charged material under PERFECT testing conditions is rated at 0.300 microns & larger. The 2 NIH studies show Covid at 0.125 to 0.004 microns.
As soon as one starts to move their jaw, the N95 rating is gone. The moisture being exhaled immediately degrades the N95 rating.
Remember, a necklace of Garlic & Cross keeps Vampires away. That actually works. Haven't been bitten by a Vampire yet.
Post a Comment