A Prevea front line healthcare worker receives a COVID-19 vaccine. (Photo: Prevea Health)
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — COVID-19 vaccination has officially begun in Brown County.
Twenty healthcare workers between Prevea and HSHS St. Vincent received doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday. Prevea CEO Dr. Ashok Rai was one of them. He described the moment in a press briefing.
“[It was] great. Emotional,” Rai said. “It’s good to have it, especially for those of us who have been working on it for months…can’t wait for 21 more days.”
In 21 days, Rai along with the other 19 initial vaccinated workers will require a booster dose of the vaccine in order to reach maximum efficiency.
More healthcare workers across the region will be receiving vaccinations over the next few weeks as part of “phase 1A” of the distribution strategy, one of three stages of phase 1.
“Phase 1B will be for what we call essential workers,” Rai said. “Phase 1C will be our highest risk patients. Those over the age of 65 and those with comorbidities.”
It’s not clear who exactly qualifies as an “essential worker” eligible to get the vaccine as part of phase 1B. The state is expected to release a list of qualifying occupations in the coming weeks.
Notably, health officials say the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is not a free pass to ignore mask mandates and social distancing guidelines.
“It prevents you from getting it, but we don’t have evidence that it prevents you from transmitting it,” Rai explained. “So until we have a very large portion of the population vaccinated, we are going to recommend masking and social distancing.”
The vaccine uses a spike protein used by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, to force your body to produce antibodies required to fight the virus. It doesn’t use any living or dead viruses.
Dr. Michael Landrum with Bellin Health says between 60-80% of the population will need to be vaccinated before the pandemic can be considered at an end.
“All this loss and suffering stops if enough of us get vaccinated,” Landrum said during a ‘Face of COVID’ briefing with Brown County Health on Wednesday. “This is how we end the pandemic.”
He says concerns about the safety of the vaccine aren’t justified and that the Pfizer vaccine, along with vaccines awaiting FDA approval, have been rigorously tested despite the relatively short roll-out time.
“All of the vaccines…in the pipeline are not cutting corners in terms of testing whether they’re safe or not,” he said.
That’s due, in part, to a large infusion of cash from the federal government allowing
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