Georgia health-care workers and nursing home residents will start receiving immunizations against COVID-19 this week as the state Department of Public Health gets its first shipments of a vaccine produced by Pfizer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHopefully, this is the beginning of the end of this pandemic,\u201d Christy Norman, vice president of pharmacy services at Emory Healthcare, said Monday during a news briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control during the weekend issued an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine, the first to emerge from the U.S. pipeline targeting coronavirus. A second vaccine produced by Moderna is expected to receive federal approval for distribution this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is really exciting for us,\u201d said Dr. Marybeth Sexton, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiologist at Emory. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have access to a vaccine that looks in initial clinical studies to be highly effective.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Approval of vaccines to combat COVID-19 is being sped through what usually is a lengthy process by the Trump administration\u2019s Operation Warp Speed because of the pressing nature of the pandemic, as cases of COVID-19 diagnoses, hospitalizations and deaths continue surging across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of Sunday, 476,044 had been diagnosed with coronavirus, and 9,205 had died from the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Sexton said the rush to get the vaccines into American arms did not compromise safety. The technology behind the vaccines was thoroughly tested in clinical trials before the pandemic began, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe researchers were able to use lessons learned,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexton said Americans should not be concerned about the side effects accompanying the vaccines, including soreness in the arm, fatigue or a slight fever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are not serious, life-threatening or dangerous,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexton said health-care workers will be in the first group to get the shots because of concerns that the surge in coronavirus hospitalizations is straining the health-care workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven if they have a mild case [of COVID-19], they\u2019re out of work 10 days,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a real concern for staff to take care of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexton said the prioritizing of health-care workers for vaccinations includes not just doctors and nurses but custodians, transporters and other hospital workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll of these people are considered health-care workers and are prioritized,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other group getting top priority to receive the vaccines \u2013 residents of nursing homes and other elderly-care facilities \u2013 will be served through a partnership the CDC has set up with CVS and Walgreens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexton said the next group to receive vaccinations after health-care workers and residents of elderly-care facilities probably will be essential workers who must leave their homes despite the pandemic, such as grocery store employees and delivery truck drivers. Another group that will receive high priority are seniors and Georgians suffering from chronic illnesses that leave them vulnerable to the virus, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While many Americans have expressed reservations about getting the shots out of safety concerns, Sexton said the number of willing participants is going up, probably due to the impact of the surge in cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medical experts have said achieving \u201cherd immunity\u201d against COVID-19 \u2013 the threshold for making further spread of the virus unlikely \u2013 is getting 60% to 70% of the U.S. population vaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia health-care workers and nursing home residents will start receiving immunizations against COVID-19 this week as the state Department of Public Health gets its first shipments of a vaccine produced by Pfizer. \u201cHopefully, this is the beginning of the end of this pandemic,\u201d Christy Norman, vice president of pharmacy services at Emory Healthcare, said Monday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7286],"tags":[8481,8480,8474,9156],"class_list":["post-19856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-sun","tag-vaccine","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}