‘Healing Is Coming’ Says New York Nurse After Being First in US To Get the COVID-19 Vaccine
An intensive care unit nurse became the first person in the United States to receive the newly authorized Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, calling it a sign that “healing is coming” as the U.S. coronavirus…
An intensive care unit nurse became the first person in the United States to receive the newly authorized Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, calling it a sign that “healing is coming” as the U.S. coronavirus death toll approaches 300,000.
Sandra Lindsay, who has treated some of the sickest COVID-19 patients for months, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the New York City borough of Queens, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a livestream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”
Cuomo tweeted a picture of Lindsay, wearing a mask and staring resolutely ahead, as a doctor injected her in the arm, and said she was the first American to get vaccinated.
“This is what heroes look like,” Cuomo wrote.
Minutes after Lindsay received the injection, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
Northwell Health, New York state’s largest health system, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the country’s first inoculations of the a COVID-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials on Monday.
The vaccine, developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE, won an emergency use authorization from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.
The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first case of COVID-19.
As of Monday, the United States had registered more than 16 million COVID-19 cases and was fast closing in on the grim milestone of 300,000 deaths from the virus.