The first coronavirus vaccine administered in New York, and possibly in the U.S., was given to intensive care unit nurse Sandra Lindsay at Long Island Jewish Medical Center on Monday morning.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday and shipped across the U.S. over the weekend, with Moderna’s vaccine likely to be approved before the end of December. Health care workers and elderly Americans will be first in line to receive a vaccine.
Lindsay was flanked by Michael Dowland, CEO of Northwell Health, and Dr. Michelle Chester, who administered the vaccine in a livestream with New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
“I would like to thank all the frontline workers, all my colleagues, who have been doing yeoman’s [work] to fight this pandemic around the world,” Lindsay said after receiving the vaccination. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history.”
New York City was the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. in March and April, and over 24,500 residents of the city have died of the illness since the pandemic began. Almost 300,000 Americans have died of coronavirus as of Monday, with 16,400,000 testing positive for the illness.
The testing and approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, along with the expected approval of vaccines from Moderna, Oxford, and AstraZeneca, were completed in unprecedented time, with the process usually taking years. Moderna’s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccines were developed with new technology never before used on a wide scale, and are over 90-percent effective against coronavirus.
Send a tip to the news team at NR.