GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – One year ago on Tuesday, the first COVID vaccine was administered in Wisconsin.
Doctors reflect on the first COVID-19 vaccination in Wisconsin on its one-year anniversary, Dec. 14, 2021. (WLUK video)
Over the last year, about 61% of Wisconsinites have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Tina Schubert, a respiratory therapist at UW Health, was the first.
“I was nervous. I was very nervous, I was excited… it all happened so quickly and then it hit me. And I was just excited and grateful that I finally got the vaccine.”
A year later, Schubert hopes people continue to follow her lead.
“You want to get out of this? Trust me. This is the way to do it. I want to be back to normal. So please, get the vaccine.”
HSHS Wisconsin and Prevea Health also started vaccinating people about a year ago.
President and CEO Dr. Ashok Rai tells FOX 11 the easiest and best way to get the pandemic under control is to get the community up to a certain level of immunity, but with new variants, it’s hard to define what that level is.
“With some variants, we could’ve said 70 percent. Now some models would say with delta you need to get to 85 percent vaccinated in a community which is very difficult to do, especially with a lot of the misinformation out there right now. So I don’t think our focus is as much on a total percentage as it is as much getting the education out there.”
Rai, and other health officials, say one of their main goals is still to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
“As much as we can do to prevent hospitalization, the keys we have there is vaccination, masking in certain environments and then the treatments as they come up that we can use in the outpatient setting, and really increasing our testing infrastructure. Those are the tools that we have.”
As of Tuesday, Prevea Health has administered over 250,000 doses of the COVID vaccine.
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