The District is expecting to receive 6,825 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in the first batch, which will be used for health care workers and first responders, officials announced.
“Vaccinating health care workers first ensures we have a healthy workforce to treat and care for sick people,” said DC Health Director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt at a press conference about the city’s vaccine plan on Thursday. “It’s not just necessarily the doctors and nurses, but it also includes the techs, environmental services staff, et cetera.”
Health care employees who are directly exposed to COVID-19 patients will be the top priority in vaccination, according to Nesbitt.
Following health care workers and first responders (Phase 1A), DC will vaccinate its essential workers and at-risk residents during Phase 1B. With Phase 2, the rest of the Phase 1 populations and the general public will have access to the vaccine. Finally Phase 3 will focus on the general public.
The phases are designed as per guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Every individual who gets the vaccine shot is required to receive the second dose, as well, for it to be effective.
The District has approximately 85,000 frontline health care workers, which means the 6,825 doses in the first shipment will be far from enough to even provide the first shots for tens of thousands of health care workers and first responders.
The vaccine produced by the US drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech first needs to get an approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
A total of seven boxes, each of them containing 975 vaccine shots, will be transported to six DC hospitals that have the necessary cold storage required for safely keeping the Pfizer vaccine:
- MedStar Washington Hospital Center
- Howard University Hospital
- The George Washington University Hospital
- Children’s National Hospital
- Kaiser Permanente
- MedStar Georgetown University Hospital