‘Thank God’: Nurses, doctors first to get coronavirus vaccine at Lancaster hospital
Michelle Coats anxiously wiggled in the hospital chair. Beside her, nurse Megan Benton prepared Coats’ COVID-19 vaccine.
Coats, nursing supervisor at MUSC Lancaster Medical Center, has been on the front line, treating thousands of patients at the hospital infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic hit in March.
“I’m excited,” said Coats, who was to become the third person in Lancaster to receive the pharmaceutical company Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last Friday.
Benton held the small vial, which contains five doses, up to the light, inserted the needle and drew the concoction. Coats, who wore blue scrubs and heart-covered socks, held up her sleeve and looked away. Benton leaned down, swiped alcohol over her arm and injected the vaccine into Coats’ left arm.
Outside the room, about a dozen of Coats’ colleagues cheered and clapped.
“Good job!” Benton told Coats.
“Yay!” Coats said, smiling. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
Coats, still smiling, walked out of the small patient room and into a warm hug from her colleagues.
A sigh of relief filled the room.
And for what was going through Coats’ head when she got the vaccine: “Thank God,” she told reporters. She started to cry.
“Thank God we can see light at the end of the tunnel,” Coats said. “There’s been so many people that have struggled with this and just to be able to get this vaccine, it is just absolutely amazing.”
Coats, who has been a nurse for more than 20 years, said she hasn’t seen anything as heartbreaking as the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s really tough seeing them struggle, struggle to breathe,” she said. “Because visitation is restricted our nurses are going in when the patients are dying and they are holding their hands. They’re praying with them. They’re being with them. It’s emotionally very difficult.”
‘This certainly is hope’
Lancaster’s Dr. Howard Snyder, a diagnostic radiologist, was the first in the county to get the vaccine Wednesday.
Snyder, who started his career in 1983 at Rock Hill’s Piedmont Medical Center, rolled up the left sleeve of his blue and white pin stripe shirt, waiting for Benton to get the shot prepared.
“Are you ready?” Benton asked.
“I’m ready,” Snyder smiled.
Snyder took a deep breath. Benton leaned over, swiped the alcohol, and within seconds, Snyder felt hope.
“Every morning, I come in to read off a lot of horrible X-rays that were done on a lot of the COVID patients,” Snyder told reporters. “I’ve seen many of them stay in the hospital for a very long period of time and have been critically ill. For me, this certainly is hope and gives me courage that we’ll stop this. And I won’t come into those kind of X-rays anymore.”
The hospital’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Edward McCutcheon was next.
“Today has been a monumental day for the health care system,” McCutcheon told reporters. “We’ve seen during this pandemic that COVID-19 is devastating for those who are vulnerable. This helps us move in the direction of navigating through this pandemic and getting to the other side.”
Despite the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine, McCutcheon said the state’s residents need to remember the pandemic is not over and everyone needs to take COVID-19 seriously — by continuing to exercise precautions.
“The COVID-19 vaccination is just another layer of protection,” he said. “The desire is to develop herd immunity. So, all the other things that we’ve implemented since the start of this pandemic, which includes masks, good hand hygiene, as well as social distancing, those all should be adhered to even with the vaccination in place.”
The first doses of Pfizer’s vaccine also were administered to staff members at Chester Medical Center starting at 8:30 a.m., Brian Grieg, chief nursing officer at both hospitals said. Grieg, who was the fourth staff member to get vaccinated, said the vaccine will lower the possibility of doctors and nurses infecting patients.
“This is monumental for us to provide that safe level of care for our patients,” he said.
‘It’s the right thing to do’
The four staff members who received the first vaccines Wednesday all encouraged others to join them.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Coats said. “I encourage the public to get it. It’s something that you need to do.”
Grieg said though it will be months until the vaccine is available to the public, it’s important that the public understands the facts and refers to resources on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
He said he understands getting the vaccine is a personal decision, but he has one request: “Please don’t encourage others not to do it.”
“There’s so many rumors about it — truly, just read up on the facts, and do not discourage others from making a choice for themselves,” Grieg said.
What does the future hold?
Grieg told The Herald after front line health care workers are vaccinated, the next allocations will go to hospital staff members who come within six feet of patients, such as cafeteria workers.
Nursing home staff and patients will be included in the first wave of vaccines, Grieg said. Details of the second wave has not yet been determined, but Grief said he expects the next vaccines to go to seniors with preexisting conditions. After that, the vaccine should reach the rest of the public, he said.
Since the vaccine will take months to distribute to the general public, Grieg said the public can still expect to see a spike in coronavirus cases this winter. He told The Herald in November that he predicts the pandemic will return to the initial severity seen in the spring.
Wednesday, Grieg said he still thinks a spike will occur, as cases have “tripled” in the weeks following Thanksgiving.
Grieg said the vaccine’s introduction does not mean the pandemic is over, but for the first time since March, he said: “I feel relief.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 11:40 AM with the headline "‘Thank God’: Nurses, doctors first to get coronavirus vaccine at Lancaster hospital."
