1st COVID-19 vaccines given in Lehigh Valley: ‘Light at the end of the dark, long tunnel’
Updated Dec 17, 2020;
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Chantal Branco is one of the first people in the Lehigh Valley to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think it’s a historic moment. It feels that now we have some hope,” said the nursing director from Coopersburg who for months has been toiling with her team on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic at Lehigh Valley Hospital’s Cedar Crest campus. The last few months especially have been physically and emotionally exhausting as cases, hospitalizations and deaths surge across Pennsylvania and the nation.
Hospital networks and health care systems across northeastern Pennsylvania began doling out doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to staff this week, kicking off the first phase of an effort to curb the coronavirus pandemic in the commonwealth.
Regional distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11, began with high-risk individuals in the health care field, along with residents of long term care facilities, as per the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
The vaccine, which has an efficacy rating of 95%, consists of two doses spaced three weeks apart.