FALL RIVER Moderna has come to SSTAR.
The first batch of COVID-19 vaccine doses manufactured by the Cambridge-based bio-tech company Moderna was delivered Tuesday to Fall River’s non-profit Stanley Street Treatment and Resources.
“We got 100 yesterday and surprise, surprise, another 100 today,” SSTAR chief executive Nancy Paull said on Wednesday.
Paull said 20 of her employees got a shot in the arm on Tuesday and another 20 were set to receive the same by the end of Wednesday.
She said beginning next Monday 40 employees each weekday will take the first of two Moderna vaccine shots inside the central building of SSTAR’s main campus at 400 Stanley St.
“I was too sick to think about,” he said.
Some people who contract COVID-19 manage to shake it off fairly easily. Others feel as though they’ve entered some version of purgatory.
The onetime Fall River mayor and current criminal lawyer, radio talk host and recreational marijuana investor says he qualifies for the latter category.
“I never got off the couch,” the soft-spoken and low-keyed Flanagan said. “If I moved or just tried talking I became winded.”
He describes the second of the three weeks he spent at home in self-quarantine as having been “seven days of horror.”
It wasn’t until this past Tuesday that Flanagan felt strong enough to resume his law practice and return to his Rock Street office where he sat for an interview.
FALL RIVER Nancy Paull isn’t the only one champing at the bit for the first round of COVID-19 vaccines.
But unlike most of us, Paull knows just how overwhelming it can be trying to keep pace with testing requests.
“We’re at the tipping point here,” the chief executive of Stanley Street Treatment and Resources, or SSTAR, said, referring to the ongoing demand for free coronavirus testing.
Paull, who has been CEO of SSTAR for 34 years, says her non-profit which offers free coronavirus testing five days a week at its two Fall River sites has had a waiting list of people eager to be swabbed.