FORT COLLINS — As one of the first Coloradans ttho get vaccinated against COVID-19 on Monday, Dr. Diana Breyer said she felt nothing but positive.
Nearly every patient that Breyer, a critical care and pulmonology physician, had tended to in the intensive care unit earlier in the day was there because of the coronavirus. The ICU had gotten so full in the latest surge the hospital double-bunked units.
“This is a game-changer,” she said after receiving the shot at UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital.
Breyer’s exhilaration was palpable Monday afternoon, and she wasn’t the only one. Frontline health care workers buzzed around her at the Fort Collins hospital, site of Colorado’s first vaccination against the deadly coronavirus — the beginning of a historic campaign to inoculate millions across the state and country against the deadly respiratory disease.
Medical staffers cheered after colleagues received their shots. And Gov. Jared Polis could barely contain his own joy as he talked to each of the health care workers receiving the vaccine Monday.
“There’s still a long road ahead, but today’s an exciting day for humanity, for Coloradans, for Americans, because in a very visceral way, the end is in sight,” Polis said at the hospital. “It is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.”
Like others on hand Monday, Breyer — who serves as UCHealth’s chief quality officer in northern Colorado — said she wanted to remind people that while there’s hope in the long term, in the immediate future “we really need to remain careful so that we are protecting especially vulnerable populations.”
Colorado received its first doses of the vaccine from Pfizer on Monday morning and more shipments will arrive over the next two days. With this initial batch, the state will receive enough doses to give 46,800 people their first of the two required shots, to be administered three weeks apart.
“Who ever thought we’d be excited to see a needle?” Polis joked prior to the first injection at Poudre Valley Hospital.
The first injection in Colorado went into the arm of Kevin Londrigan, a respiratory therapist at UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland who has underlying health conditions.
“This has been a long, exhausting time coming,” he said. “The vaccine isn’t the end of it, but it is the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Between the state lab, the Fort Collins hospital and UCHealth’s Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, 133 people were vaccinated Monday.
Daphne Dubach, a registered nurse who works on the medical surgical unit in Fort Collins, was the third person in Colorado to receive a COVID-19 shot.
“I think we’ll have a lot more confidence going in taking care of these COVID-19 patients,” she said. “And just feeling more comfortable going home at night to our loved ones.”
She added: “It’s a good day.”
Gina Harper, clinical coordinator with pharmacy, measures out the exact amount of the Covid-19 vaccine for a dose before it is administered to patients in Colorado at UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital on December 14, 2020 in Fort Collins, Colorado. The first Covid-19 vaccines were administered in Colorado to frontline health care workers in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs today.
The start of a mass campaign
A FedEx courier delivered a box containing 975 doses of vaccine to Colorado’s state lab in Denver just after 8 a.m. Monday. They arrived in a thermal container packed with dry ice and then were placed into an ultra-cold freezer, where they will be stored until it is distributed to hospitals. Poudre Valley and Memorial hospitals each received 3,900 doses Monday.
“I’ve been waiting to do this signature for nine months,” said Polis, who greeted the FedEx worker and helped unpack the vaccine before it went into the freezer.
The arrival of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine ushers in what will be a months-long inoculation effort. The vaccinations began just three days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered an emergency authorization of the shot developed by Pfizer. The company said last month its vaccine is more than 90% effective preventing COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
It’s a massive undertaking that is still filled with uncertainty about how much vaccine supply will be available in the coming weeks and months.
Colorado will receive 1.69% of any available vaccine — a figure based on population — but as of Friday, state public health leaders had not heard from the federal government as to how much of an allocation the state will receive after the 95,600 initial doses expected from Moderna next week.
That vaccine, which will not require the ultra-cold storage that Pfizer’s shots need, is still awaiting federal emergency use authorization.
Colorado has drafted a phased approach to distributing the vaccine because of how severely limited supply will be. Under the plan, the first shots will go to health care workers in close contact with COVID-19 patients and those living and working in nursing homes.
Then, later this winter, other health care workers, first responders and people who work in home health, hospice and dental settings will begin receiving shots.
By the spring, state public health officials hope to begin administering the vaccines to a group largely made up of people at high-risk for COVID-19 and essential workers. This second phase is not yet prioritized because the state is waiting for federal guidance.
Although Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said members of the public who want the vaccine should be able to get it by April, Colorado’s public health officials are being more conservative, saying don’t expect widespread public availability until summer.
“As soon as we get them in Colorado, they’re going to be available for folks,” Polis told The Denver Post on Monday afternoon. “So the sooner, the better.”
State public health officials don’t expect the vaccine to become more widely available until next year, so Coloradans are encouraged to keep wearing masks, washing their hands and social-distancing.
“As vaccines come out we can’t be lax on the public health measures,” said Dr. Anuj Mehta, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Denver Health and National Jewish Heath. “It’s going to be months before we are able to get back to a closer semblance of normal.”
Polis has also asked hospitals to administer any COVID-19 doses they get within 72 hours or they will be reassigned to other locations.
“Only 30 days from immunity here,” Polis told a fourth UCHealth worker as she waited to receive a shot.
“It’s an exciting day,” replied Kelly Shaul, a registered nurses who works on the intensive care unit at UCHealth Greeley Hospital.
From Pfizer and into the arms of Coloradans
UCHealth has been preparing for the arrival of the vaccine. Part of the plans have included finding rooms to administer the shots — a feat made trickier by the fact that the facilities need to be large enough for people to follow public health guidelines and stay at least 6 feet apart, said Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention.
UCHealth also has ordered more ultra-cold freezers to help store and redistribute Pfizer’s vaccine.
“We know that we will be the keeper, but it’s not all ours,” Barron said.
Pfizer’s vaccine is particularly difficult to ship and store. It has to be stored in ultra-cold freezers at -103 degrees Fahrenheit. The vaccines are shipped in thermal containers filled with dry ice. The boxes can be replenished, but the containers can only be opened twice a day.
The vaccine can also be stored in refrigerators at temperatures between 35.6 to 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit, but will only last five days. Before the shot is administered it is diluted with saline, making five doses of vaccine per vial.
Pfizer will ship the vaccine via FedEx in doses ranging from 975 to 4,875. The state has nine hubs that will help redistribute the vaccine to other providers. At the hubs, the orders will be broken down into fewer quantities and then delivered via couriers and the Colorado National Guard to providers that don’t ultra-cold freezers.
The state government purchased 10 ultra-cold storage units to help hospitals and local public health agencies store the vaccine, including for UCHealth’s Greeley hospital and Yampa Valley Medical Center in Steamboat Springs.
UCHealth, in deciding who will receive the initial doses, also has taken into consideration any potential side effects — which can include fever, chills and body aches — that might cause someone to have to call out sick. Hospitals want to avoid a scenario in which multiple workers in a unit are out of work at the same time, Barron said.
One of the challenges the state will face as it rolls out the vaccination campaign is hesitancy from those concerned about the safety of the shots after such an unprecedented and rapid development.
That’s part of the reason Nelly Eckhardt, an environmental services technician at UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies who cleans and sanitizes patient rooms, was excited to be chosen among the first to get the vaccine. She has three kids and her husband is older, so she feels better being around her family, despite working in COVID-19 areas.
“I did not expect it, but I was so excited and happy and I’m happy to be a good example for the community,” Eckhardt said.
Eckhardt, a Latina, believes that more work needs to be done to educate Latino communities in Colorado about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
UCHealth has hosted Q&A sessions and town halls to answer workers’ questions and address any concerns about the vaccine. The system also sent out questionnaires to gauge employees’ feelings about the shots and more than 90% of people said they will get the vaccine, Barron said.
“The ultimate goal is… we want to be able to offer it to those again, who are at higher risk of exposure within our system,” Barron said. “To give them that opportunity for an extra level of protection.”
Researchers at UCHealth and CU Anschutz Medical Campus have participated in more than 40 COVID-19 clinical trials, including for vaccines developed by Moderna and by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
This content was originally published here.