DC Mayor Muriel Bowser received her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot against COVID-19 at the Kaiser Permanente Capitol Hill Medical Center on Monday.
“I hate needles. I gotta tell you. You talk about anxiety producing, getting vaccinated on camera is causing me some anxiety. But it is important for all of us to get the vaccine to get our lives back to normal,” the mayor said at a press conference ahead of her vaccination.
Bowser stated that she acknowledges people’s questions and concerns, but encouraged everyone to educate themselves on the issue and find the answers to their questions “so that they’re prepared when it’s their turn,” as the mayor herself did.
The city’s health director LaQuandra Nesbitt was also present at the event. Wearing a mask that read “DC needs more vaccine,” Nesbitt complained about the District’s limited number of coronavirus shots.
“We simply do not have enough vaccines,” Nesbitt said. “Even with our best plans and rolling out the phases and the tiers two weeks ago, we are still in a position where we cannot implement fully any tier of a specific phase. Our goal of creating tiers within our phases was that we would be able to fully implement a tier of a phase but we can’t even manage to do that with the dismal amount of vaccines we’re receiving.”
Bowser and other DC officials are eligible for the vaccine under the category of “Continuity of District Government” personnel, which is part of the city’s COVID-19 vaccination plan. Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Robert Contee got the vaccine last week.
DC Health also started inoculating teachers and other in-person employees at public schools and public charter schools on January 25, ahead of the restart of in-person teaching in the third term.
This week, DC is slated to receive 8,775 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 5,600 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
According to the DC government, a breakdown of this week’s vaccine distribution will be as follows:
Moderna doses breakdown:
- 2,975 doses are for appointments that were scheduled over the portal last week
- 1,500 are for appointments that were booked in the previous week
- 300 doses to a pharmacy to vaccinate residents of Intermediate Care Facilities
- 100 doses to a pharmacy to vaccinate residents of community residential facilities/group homes
- 400 doses to Unity Healthcare to vaccinate individuals experiencing homelessness and patients at Unity
- 200 doses to United Medical Center for patients that will be booked directly through UMC
- 125 doses for pharmacy or provider staff, or to be allocated in the following week’s schedule
Pfizer doses breakdown:
- 3,900 doses to children for DCPS in-person staff
- 1,950 doses to One Medical for charter school in-person staff
- 1,950 doses to Kaiser for MPD and their eligible patients
- 975 doses to Sibley/John Hopkins for Senior Housing-DCHA initiative and their patients
District to Receive Over 14,000 Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine This Week
DC Set to Start Vaccinating Teachers, Police Against COVID-19