Officials at the St. Joseph Health System are prepared to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine as presented in the Indiana Department of Health’s guidelines.
The St. Joseph Health System, with campuses in St. Joseph and Marshall Counties, is one of 50 hospital systems in Indiana with the first chance to administer vaccines to healthcare workers who have direct face-to-face contact with patients, and those who live in long-term care or assisted care facilities, and staff members in those facilities.
The St. Joseph Health System will receive 975 Pfizer doses in the first partial week. Another shipment is expected to arrive on Monday with the Moderna vaccine.
In the state, over 25,000 Hoosiers have signed up to receive the vaccine and slots are still available on December 28. A link will be used to register to receive the vaccine. Eligible healthcare workers can register at the Plymouth Acute Care Hospital campus.
St. Joseph Health System Chief Clinical Officer Genevieve Lankowicz said in a press conference Tuesday morning that a patient will receive two doses of the vaccine. The second Pfizer vaccine will be administered three weeks later and the Moderna vaccine will be administered four weeks after the initial dose. She stressed that is important to not mix the brand of doses. The registration information that follows the patient should keep track of which brand was received in the first dose.
Lankowicz stated that in the Pfizer and Moderna trials, there were no serious adverse effects noted.
“Both vaccines are estimated to have efficacy at around 94 percent which is fantastic,” commented Lankowicz. “That means the people who receive the vaccine did develop immunity. One cannot get COVID-19 from this vaccine.”
The vaccine allows the body to make antibodies against the spike protein of COVID. The immune system detects it as foreign and fights the virus.
Those who receive the vaccine will be monitored for about 15 minutes after administration to ensure no allergic reactions develop or other serious health issues.
Lankowicz noted that there will new shipments of the vaccine in the country all of the time with rollout to different cohorts of people in the coming months. Overall, she said, it is the goal to vaccinate 100 million people by the end of March.
