O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) – Health care workers at a Kansas City hospital will start receiving shots of the coronavirus vaccine Monday, and thousands of other medical workers across Missouri will soon follow.Truman Medical Centers/University Health received its first shipment of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning and spokeswoman Leslie Carto said the first vaccinations were expected to start by mid-afternoon.
Frontline medical workers such as those who work in emergency rooms and COVID-19 units will be the first to get the vaccine at Truman.
The Pfizer vaccine also is being sent to several other sites across the state. In St. Louis, BJC Health Care spokeswoman Laura High said vaccines will arrive by Tuesday for the first nearly 10,000 of BJC’s 50,000 health care workers. She said those vaccinations will begin this week, but declined to be more specific.
“This is the light at the end of the tunnel,” Dr. Mark Steele, Truman’s executive chief clinical officer, said in a statement. “But it’s a very long tunnel. And so while the vaccine has arrived, we urge the public to continue to wear masks and practice social distancing.”
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use on Friday.
Missouri received 51,675 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in its first shipment. The state expects to receive an additional 63,675 doses of the Pfizer vaccine next week as well as 105,300 doses of the Moderna vaccine if it also receives federal clearance. An expert panel is set to review the Moderna vaccine Thursday.
Staff and residents in long-term care facilities will begin receiving vaccines from that second week’s shipment. Employees from Walgreens and CVS pharmacies will be largely responsible for administering the vaccines at long-term care facilities under a federal agreement.
Both vaccines require recipients to receive a second dose to be most effective 21 days later for the Pfizer vaccine and 28 days later for the Moderna vaccine.
Williams said vaccinations for essential workers such as teachers, firefighters and police officers will likely begin in the first or second week of January, and everyone else should start getting shots by April. Everyone who wants a vaccination could have one by July, he said.
The vaccine arrives at a time when hospitalizations remain near record levels. Information from the state’s COVID-19 dashboard on Monday showed that 21% of in-patient beds and intensive care unit beds are available statewide, a slight improvement over last week. The dashboard showed 2,562 new confirmed cases and three new deaths. All told, Missouri has reported 347,603 confirmed cases and 4,514 deaths since the onset of the pandemic.
Missouri’s largest county is continuing with strict guidelines to try and control the spread of the virus. St. Louis County Executive Sam Page on Monday announced a two-week extension of the ban on indoor dining at restaurants. He said the recent plateau in cases is encouraging, but not enough to remove the ban that had been set to expire Monday.
“We need to see this go in the other direction and start to decrease, and we need to see hospitalizations start to decrease as well,” said Page, a Democrat.
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