December 18, 2020 GMT
BOSTON (AP) Massachusetts expects to receive 20% fewer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine this year after the federal government reduced its allotment, state officials said Friday.
The state joins more than a dozen others that have been told their vaccine shipments will be smaller than planned in coming weeks. Instead of receiving 180,000, Massachusetts now expects to get 145,000.
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker said he hasn’t received an explanation for the cutback.
“We’re certainly frustrated,” Baker said at a COVID-19 briefing on Friday. “We’re working to get clarity on what this means, what happened and how that bump will be dealt with along the way.”
Baker: Feds reduced Massachusetts vaccine allotment
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Janitorial supervisor becomes first state employee vaccinated
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Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester administers first doses of COVID vaccine to employees
Updated Dec 18, 2020;
Posted Dec 18, 2020
Wanda Reynolds, a respiratory therapist, received the the first COVID-19 vaccination at Saint Vincent Hospital on Thursday.
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Wanda Reynolds became the first staff member at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester to receive the coronavirus vaccine on Thursday.
A nurse asked the respiratory therapist if she was ready. Reynolds replied, “Yup.” and soon applause filled the room.
The moment was replicated across Massachusetts and the country this week as hospitals began providing the vaccine to employees.
Across the city at UMass Memorial Health Care’s University Campus, staff at the hospital also received the vaccine on Thursday.
By Katie Lannan and Michael P. Norton, State House News Service
December 17, 2020
Katie Lannan and Michael P. Norton, State House News Service
Boston Medical Center pharmacy technical worker William Senior removed two trays of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, each containing 975 doses, from the box it arrived in Monday morning. Jesse Costa/WBUR photo
As the first Covid-19 vaccines began arriving in Massachusetts on Monday, a 96-year-old World War II veteran in Bedford became the first VA patient in the country to get the shot. The VA Bedford Healthcare system announced the milestone over social media, posting that Margaret Klessens, a resident of the Community Living Center in the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, had received the shot at 12:07 p.m.