‘Here we finally are.’ First healthcare workers in Miami-Dade receive COVID-19 vaccine.
Less than half a year removed from weathering one of the most drastic COVID-19 surges in the country, front-line healthcare workers at Miami’s public hospital system rolled up the sleeves of their scrubs on Tuesday and welcomed their first doses of a vaccine shown to be capable of keeping the novel coronavirus at bay.
The conference room inside Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of the most active South Florida hospitals during the pandemic, erupted in applause after Grace Meatley, a nurse in the intensive care unit, received Jackson’s first dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which arrived at the health system Tuesday morning.
The joyous occasion was a marked departure from recent news conferences at the facility over the last 10 months that often warned of worsening statistics and dire illness.
“It’s a big day,” said Dr. David De La Zerda, the head of Jackson Memorial’s intensive care unit who received the second dose, as he looked out across the room crowded with members of the media and healthcare workers. “Here we finally are.”
But De La Zerda, who was the voice of the public hospital in some of its most challenging times this year, stressed that some of his colleagues’ hardest days are ahead, especially with the vaccine not expected to reach the general public until spring next year at the earliest.
“I don’t want people to have a false sense of security,” he said.
After nine Jackson employees received their shots in the conference room, hospital leaders and physicians joined Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava outside the Ryder Trauma Center on the Jackson Memorial campus. The mayor had a similar message to De La Zerda, reminding the public that more than 4,000 people had died from the novel illness “right here in Miami-Dade County.”
“Getting complacent doesn’t put ourselves out of the picture, it only puts us more at risk,” said Levine Cava, who just emerged from her own quarantine period after contracting COVID-19. “So the only way to keep our economy moving is to stop the spread of the disease by taking all the steps, wearing our masks, washing our hands and physical distancing.”
Levine Cava’s comments were underscored by a rough start to the week for COVID statistics in Miami-Dade, where the number of people being treated for COVID-19 rose to 932, according to the state Agency for Healthcare Administration. Hospitalizations have risen sharply in recent days in South Florida and across the state, which had more than 5,100 people being treated for the illness on Tuesday afternoon.
The Florida Department of Health confirmed 9,411 additional cases of COVID-19 statewide on Tuesday, 2,160 of them in Miami-Dade, with the percentage of tests coming back positive for newly tested people averaging 8.7% over the last two weeks.
‘We’re calling this a glimmer of hope’
Jackson Health CEO Carlos Migoya addressed the question of vaccine hesitancy, with a survey at the healthcare system showing that just under half of eligible employees wanted to get the vaccine in the first phase. He said the nine employees who received their shots publicly on Tuesday would help build trust in the community to convince more people to get inoculated.
“I know many people out there are doubtful about what the vaccine will do,” Migoya said. “We are hoping with this transparency that people feel more comfortable with what it is and we get out of the myths that are out there about the vaccine.”
Before the press conference, Migoya, who had a mild case of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, said he anticipated getting the Pfizer shot by the end of the week.
“I didn’t want to be one of the first because I didn’t want to hog it,” Migoya said. “But I think it’s important the public knows the vaccine is safe.”
By 6:30 p.m., a Jackson spokesperson said the hospital system had inoculated more than 1,000 employees, five hours after starting.
More than 150 hospitals in Florida to get the vaccine by next week
The inoculations at Jackson on Tuesday followed the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine being administered at Memorial Healthcare System’s specialty pharmacy in Miramar on Monday. That hospital system anticipates using 7,000 doses of the vaccine for its front-line healthcare workers and other hospital staff.
By the end of next week, the number of hospitals that have administered the vaccine could grow from 5 to more than 150, according to Jared Moskowitz, head of the Florida agency in charge of distributing vaccines across the state.
Moskowitz based his projection on an expected 300,000 to 400,000 doses of another COVID-19 vaccine, manufactured by Moderna, which officials will use to vaccinate more front-line workers, first responders and residents of long-term care facilities.
The plan hinges on the Moderna vaccine being authorized by federal officials on Friday and the rollout of all the doses going smoothly.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon in West Palm Beach, Gov. Ron DeSantis said his administration is still waiting to hear from Pfizer on how many more doses of vaccine it can expect for the remainder of December. Florida was supposed to get 205,000 Pfizer doses next week and then 247,000 the week after that, the governor said.
“Those next two weeks shipments of Pfizer are on hold right now,” said DeSantis. “We don’t know whether we are going to get any or not. We are just going to have to wait.”
DeSantis said the delay was due to a production issue with Pfizer.
“It has nothing to do with the federal government or nothing to do specifically with Florida,” he said. “This is just what’s happening nationwide.”
‘The beginning of the end’
Earlier on Tuesday, away from the cameras, Dr. Peter Paige, a senior administrator at Jackson and chief medical officer for the county under Levine Cava, said Miami-Dade still had a long way to go.
Paige anticipated it would be a huge logistical challenge not only to get all the vaccine doses needed to Miami-Dade, but also to get enough people to trust a vaccine that was produced in record time, more than four times faster than the next-fastest vaccine in history.
“It’s been such a struggle this year that we’re calling this a glimmer of hope,” Paige said. “But the big issue here is we’ve got a few months left.”
Dr. Hansel Tookes, a leader for equity in healthcare in Florida and assistant professor at the University of Miami who also works at Jackson, said he had “chills” multiple times on Tuesday, which he called “the beginning of the end of a nationwide and worldwide struggle.”
“It’s a historic moment for Miami,” he said. “And I’m very hopeful for our future.”
Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau reporter Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 2:48 PM.
