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A nurse prepares a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., in Binghamton, N.Y., last summer. Maui Memorial Medical Center received its first 975 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday, just as 12,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine arrived in Hawaii. AP file photo
Maui Memorial Medical Center received its first 975 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday, just as 12,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine arrived in Hawaii.
Maui Health spokeswoman Mahie Wong said that the hospital had received the Pfizer vaccine and was storing it in the facility’s freezer. “We are expecting receipt of our Moderna vaccine for our long-term care residents and employees for our Kula Hospital and Lanai Community Hospital any day now,” Wong said. “However, we are preparing behind the scenes to be ready to vaccinate as soon as we receive.”
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Ambulances sit parked outside Maui Memorial Medical Center in 2019. Emergency Medical Services officials are in limbo as they await a decision on potential budget cuts that they worry could lead to the loss of some stations on Maui. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
KAHULUI Emergency Medical Service officials are still on standby as they await a decision on budget cuts that they worry could lead to the loss of multiple stations on Maui.
“We are very concerned about pending budget cuts to emergency services statewide,” Kapena Hill, union officer with the Maui County Paramedics Association, said last week. “This will result in the loss of more than one station on Maui. All units are fair game. Once funding is cut, it is unlikely to be restored for years.”
dgrossman@mauinews.com
To help with contact tracing and potential exposure, the AlohaSafe Alert application launched today for all of Maui County, the first county in the state to put into use Hawaii’s COVID-19 exposure notification app. The Maui News / TERRIE ELIKER photo
Health care and emergency officials held a vaccination trial run at the University of Hawaii Maui College on Tuesday in preparation for the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution on Maui.
Throughout the morning in the UH-MC parking lot, officials and students from several organizations practiced a drive-thru vaccination model that will be implemented once distribution officially begins in Maui County.