Hospitals, doctors willing to give the vaccine but say they’re operating blind
Modified: 1/24/2021 9:45:22 PM
Every day, patients at Evergreen Family Clinic in Williston pepper Dr. Paul Reiss with questions about when they’ll be able to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
When and where will they get it? Can they get it at Evergreen?
Reiss’s answers, he admitted sheepishly, feel woefully inadequate. He wants to offer the vaccine to his 10,000 patients, but couldn’t say whether that will happen, or when he will find out.
“We really don’t know much of anything,” Reiss said. “It’s hard to be optimistic or even critical, because we don’t seem to be in the loop. It’s really just a waiting game.”
Copley Hospital nurses are used to administering shots, but perhaps none has been as momentous as the 125 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine given out to hospital staff last week.
Donna Bernardino, a Copley phlebotomist, said she was nervous and excited the night before, recognizing the historical nature of being among the first wave of people in the country to get vaccinated against a global disease that has been attributed to more than 300,000 American deaths in nine months. She said 20, 30 years down the road, people will look back at this as a historical moment.
âWeâll tell our grandkids,â she said. It feels like the beginning of the end, in a good way.â