North Texas Facilities Prepare To Receive, Start Administering Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Methodist Dallas Medical Center will be among the first four sites in Texas to get the COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, December 14.
It was just one day before that the hospital got the news doses were headed their way, but the facility has been preparing and training for the moment since March.
"Let's say for example, we have a clinic starting at 8:00 a.m. I'll need to pull that [vaccine] out three to four hours prior to that [and] put it into a refrigerator where it thaws, explained Dr. Jon Albrecht.
The example given is just one of the intricacies of the Pfizer vaccine that requires ultra cold storage.
Methodist Dallas purchased a 18 cubic foot freezer nine months ago in anticipation of the vaccine's approval. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to be 52% effective after the first dose and 95% after second dose.
According to Dallas Morning News more than 120 frontline workers there are scheduled to be vaccinated Monday.
Parkland Hospital is set to receive its doses on December 15. Dr. Joseph Chang, the Chief Medical Officer at Parkland, is not requiring all of the medical staff to get the vaccine but says he will be getting the shots because he is so comfortable with the science behind it. "I personally know a couple folks on these review boards, they, they take safety of the treatment more seriously than they take the effectiveness of the treatment," he said.
Moderna's vaccine, which was about 95 percent effective in trials, has not yet received approval, but most are predicting it will get the green-light sometime this week. As it stands, the U.S. is set to buy 100 million additional shots of Moderna's vaccine — doubling the initial order.
Doctors suggest you should take whichever vaccine you can get first.