FARGO, N.D. (AP) - North Dakota received its first doses of a coronavirus vaccine on Monday and quickly set about giving it to hospital workers on the front lines of the fight against the disease.
WIth a countdown of “3-2-1,” Sanford Health nurse Melodi Krank injected the vaccine into the left arm of Dr. Avish Nagpal, an infectious disease specialist who was the first person in the state to receive it. Afterward, Nagpal held up vaccine vial to a round of applause from Sanford staff members who had gathered in the back of the room.
As staff members who work in COVID-19 units, intensive care units and emergency departments lined up to receive their shots, Nagpal lauded the “medical success story” that produced a vaccine within nine months.
“I hope by the end of winter and beginning of spring we are able to vaccinate most of our population,” Nagpal told The Associated Press. “I want to assure everybody. We have reviewed the data. It’s safe. It’s effective. I would recommend that everybody who is able to get the vaccine should get it done as soon as possible.”
Mackenzie Frankl, a 26-year-old Sanford nurse who has been working in the COVID-19 unit since March, was also among the first people to receive a shot. Like Nagpal, she chose the opportunity to promote the vaccine and acknowledged that “the education piece” could take some time.
“I think taking the lead and getting that immunization will set a good example,” Frankl said. ““For me it gives me hope that there’s going to come the time when we don’t have to be scared for our friends’ health and our families’ health and the people that we care about in the community.”
Jesse Breidenbach, Sanford’s senior executive director of pharmacy, said a box of 2,925 doses of the Pfizer, Inc. vaccine packed in dry ice arrived at the hospital just before 7 a.m.
“It is definitely like Christmas came early,” Breidenbach said. “It’s really hard to describe the significance. So much planning went into this. There was so much anticipation and I think a lot of relief that we’re all hoping to get from this vaccine.”
Along with another shipment that came through the state, Sanford was expecting to administer 3,400 doses in the first round to workers in Fargo and at its satellite locations in Mayville and Hillsboro, in eastern North Dakota.
Nicole Peske, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, said the vaccine should be available to “additional groups” sometime in January, but she wasn’t specific.
North Dakota has been one of the worst-affected states in recent months, registering the highest rate of infection for many weeks and the fourth-highest death toll per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.
While the state has recently seen a decline in cases, Breidenbach said it’s refreshing to have the medicine that will “fight directly” against the virus.
“It is that light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “We’re starting to feel like we’re winning.”
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