First doses of COVID-19 vaccine may be distributed in Utah in mid-December

SALT LAKE CITY – The first cycles of the COVID-19 vaccine are expected to be given to frontline workers at five of Utah’s largest hospitals by mid-December, executives from two of Utah’s largest providers said Thursday on Thursday. utah health care.

Officials from Intermountain Healthcare and the University of Utah Health presented an overview of how they will administer the first cycles of the vaccine at a press briefing Thursday morning. First turns should be given to frontline staff at LDS Hospital and University Hospital in Salt Lake City, Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, and Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George.

Dr. Jeanmarie Mayer, chief infection control officer at the University of Utah Health, and Dr. Kristin Dascomb, medical director of employee health infection prevention at Intermountain Healthcare, said the first round of doses will be distributed shortly after the approval of the Pfizer vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA will vote on emergency use authorization, or EUA approval, for the vaccine on December 10.

“We will be receiving at least a few thousand doses per facility in each facility,” Dascomb said.

Once the FDA approves an EUA, high-risk frontline staff such as doctors, nurses, technicians, and environmental services workers close to COVID-19 patients will receive the first set of doses, Mayer and Dascomb explained. .

“It is extremely important to ensure that our health care systems remain intact and able to care for the most vulnerable of our populations,” Mayer said. “We are really targeting the healthcare staff who have been on the front lines looking after our COVID patients since March.”

The University of Utah Health plans to have a central location set up with a system in place to contact employees to find out when to get the shot, but that is still ongoing.

“Our plan reflects well the description that Dr. Mayer deployed,” said Dascomb. “We expect the vaccine to be available as early as mid-December, and we’ve been preparing for it for several months, as has the university.”

Vaccines will not be needed at any of the five hospitals, and medical staff who refuse to be vaccinated will not be punished, officials from both health systems said. Instead, they encourage employees to get the vaccine because of its benefits.

Mayer said it was planned that they will distribute 500 to 750 vaccines per day initially, with operations expanding as more doses become available. Health systems will also work with the Moderna vaccine as soon as it is approved. This is expected to happen sometime after the EUA votes for the Pfizer vaccine.

Hospitals statewide are making sure their systems are ready to safely store vaccine doses because they are “very delicate.” Staff will have about a minute to move vaccine doses to storage facilities, officials said.

Dascomb said the five hospitals that will receive the vaccine first have the capacity to store the vaccine safely. Mayer said the freezers are set to -80 degrees with a temperature monitoring system in place and “backups on backups” to ensure the vaccine stays at the right temperature during storage. Staff at the five hospitals will also receive training on how to properly handle the vaccine.

Utah Department of Health officials released their preliminary vaccine deployment schedule last month. They predicted that every adult in Utah would have access to the vaccine by the summer of 2021. Dr Tamara Sheffield, medical director of Intermountain Healthcare, said it appears the state’s schedule has not changed in the last few weeks.

She added that just because a vaccine will be available soon doesn’t mean people should no longer follow COVID-19 protocols, like wearing masks and physical distancing.

“Vaccines are the best tool, but they’re not the only one,” she says.

This story will be updated.