On Monday, Dec. 14, Oregon received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccinations. Thousands of frozen vials of the vaccine were shipped around the country via Pfizer Incorporated and BioNTech, from a Pfizer factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Non-profit healthcare organization Legacy Health accepted two shipments of almost 1,000 vaccine doses at sites in Portland and Tualatin on Monday. More shipments came in on Tuesday to the Oregon Health and Science University Pharmacy, Kaiser Permanente’s regional pharmacy warehouse in Portland and St. Alphonsus Medical Center in Ontario. According to the Oregon Health Authority, the state will receive a total of 35,100 doses throughout this first week.
The Food and Drug Administration officially approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use on Friday, observing a 95 percent effectiveness rate on all demographics. As soon as the vaccine was approved for safety and effectiveness, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense launched ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ a campaign to produce and deliver 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US, with the end goal of achieving herd immunity and ending the pandemic as soon as possible.
Front-line healthcare workers will be the first to receive the vaccine, and nursing home residents will come next, with 10,725 to be allocated to nursing homes next week.
“So many Oregonians have suffered and sacrificed in the last ten months. But starting this week… we will begin gaining ground in our fight against this disease,” Governor Kate Brown said in a public statement following the arrival.
She went on to encourage Oregonians to continue using safety precautions even after the rollouts begin.
“Please, don’t let your guard down now, when we are so close [to ending the pandemic]. Wear your mask, watch your physical distance, wash your hands, stay home when you are sick and avoid social gatherings with people outside of your households,” Brown said in the statement.
In the nearly ten months since COVID-19 came to Oregon, 95,000 Oregonians have contracted the virus and more than a thousand have passed away from it. During the first week of December, the COVID-19 virus surpassed heart disease as the top cause of death in the United States according to a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME]. They predict that despite vaccination rollout, the 300,000 national COVID deaths reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention could increase to 539,000 in the near future.
“Vaccination is likely to speed the transition back to normal later in the year but will prevent only 9,000 deaths by April 1 in the reference scenario. A further 14,000 lives can be saved with more rapid vaccine scale-up targeting high-risk individuals,” predicted the IHME report, “Scaling up mask use to 95 percent can save 66,000 lives by April 1.”
Health officials warn that vaccine rollout does not reduce the need for masks, social distancing and other necessary precautions. The general public will likely not gain access to immunization until the late spring or early summer due to limited resources.
