The Daily - America’s First Coronavirus Vaccinations

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

North Dakota and New Orleans have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus.On today’s episode, we speak to health care workers in both places as they become some of the first to receive and administer the vaccine, and tap into the mood of hope and excitement tempered by a bleak fact: The battle against Covid-19 is not yet over. Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times. For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.Background reading: Monday’s vaccinations, the first in a staggeringly complicated national campaign, were a moment infused with hope and pain for hundreds of America’s health care workers.Some of the very medical centers that have endured the worst of the coronavirus found the gloom that has long filled their corridors replaced by elation. The vaccine campaign, however, began on the same day that America surpassed 300,000 deaths from Covid-19.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Here we go. What you're seeing right now is the very first COVID-19 vaccine pulling out from the Kalamazoo Pfizer plant. Here goes the UPS truck. An unmarked police car is leading the way. People are clapping and cheering. An unmarked police car is leading the way. People are clapping and cheering. There goes the very first shipment.

The FedEx driver is waving to the crowd. There it goes. Shipments of the newly approved COVID-19 vaccine are on the way right now to hotspots nationwide. 920,000 doses are now being spread throughout the United States. We're getting the first doses here into L.A. with that FedEx plane arriving. You see this truck here making a very important delivery. This is in Phoenix. The first shipments arrived in Minnesota here within the last 15 minutes or so. Vaccine is now in Ohio. The COVID-19 vaccine is in Iowa.

So we are about to welcome the vaccines, the very first vaccines here in Colorado. Any minute now, we're going to hear a doorbell, and then we're going to, of course, let the vaccine in. Oh, there we go. Do we have to sign for it? You betcha. All right. Unless you don't. I'll sign for it. This really is the day we've been waiting for.

It starts the process of the end. We know the end is a long way off, but the end now is in sight. With this shipment, we start to see victory. We start to see our ability to preserve life and protect our people. We are going to defeat COVID. And it starts right there. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as the death toll surpasses 300,000, the first doses of a vaccine, are administered in the United States.

What it was like from North Dakota to New Orleans. It's Tuesday, December 15th. Did you know which box it was right away? December 15th. I'm Jack Healy, and I'm in Fargo, North Dakota, one of the states that has been most devastated by the coronavirus. And I'm here chasing a box of coronavirus vaccine that arrived early Monday morning at the Sanford Medical Center. All I know is, I don't know if I'm the first guy in North Dakota to receive it. Not actually receive it, but receive it. I started the day at about 7 o'clock when I got a text message from the local hospital here in Fargo saying that the shipment they had been waiting for all weekend had finally arrived. They had been expecting it at about 10.30 or 11.30 or so on Monday,

but it showed up at the hospital at precisely 7.02 a.m., and it was met there by a guy by the name of Tim Ostgarten. Probably the biggest shipment you ever received in your career. Well, history is what it is. It was a big white box containing three trays, each with 975 doses of coronavirus vaccine. The box had come off of the line of a Pfizer manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan,

and it had traveled from Michigan onto a plane to Memphis where it had sat overnight before being flown into Fargo. A Pfizer official told the hospital in Fargo that the supply of vaccine was one of the first across the country to arrive, and it was arriving in a place that needs it desperately. What did you think when you realized what was in the package? Just was kind of wondering when, if and when, if I get the shot.

Who knows? Yeah, yeah. North Dakota has had one of the highest case rates in the entire country. It's a place where a lot of smaller rural towns have overloaded hospitals. It's a place where people were slow to embrace masking and social distancing and any sorts of restrictions on business.

And as a result of that and some other issues, hospitals have been really overwhelmed and filling it fast. So after the box arrived, it was wheeled down the halls into a pharmacy storage room where the hospital staff had been preparing for it. So we're waiting for a final number for how many we're going to get at the West Campus. But we can go do that part now. Oh yeah, could I at least get my glass set up? Yeah, let's go get set up.

There was a new deep freezer to keep the vaccine stored at these ultra-cold temperatures that are necessary to keep its effectiveness. And once it arrived, people just kind of stared at it. Wow. I feel like we need like a trumpet. We need like a trumpet to sound. They were inspecting the shipping labels on the box. They were taking pictures of it. A box. They were taking pictures of it. A couple of them were taking pictures with it. We were taking pictures of it. It was this kind of object of fascination.

It was almost like this sort of miraculous thing had landed there that so many people have staked their hopes on. It feels like Christmas morning. It's just, yeah, it's even better than Christmas, right? But really, it was time to get to work. And so the hospital's pharmacy staff started to take the vaccine out. So what are you guys seeing right now from the pro-breedings? And that's a pretty complicated process.

It's not just like opening a regular box. It's just pretty much once you hold it in for three seconds, then the lights will tell you it's a fail or not a fail. And technically it just tells you it's been within range during the shipment. So it flashed green, so we know the green means okay. There was a little digital sensor there that had flashing green and red lights. And a red light was bad. That meant that there was a problem with the temperature and a green light was good.

And the lights were green. And so that was great. And so they could move on to the next step. And the next step was removing this big bag of dry ice from the box that was covering up the vaccine itself. Episode 24, I hear you. Yeah, yeah. And it was just like a scene in the movies with, you know, clouds of dry ice drifting all over the room. And once that was disposed of and out of the way,

the pharmacy manager lifted the three trays of vaccine out of the box and quickly slid them into the deep freezer. Yeah. Wow, good work, guys. That's amazing. This whole process had to occur in five minutes or less because of the rules about how cold you have to keep this vaccine. And so it was a performance that was really timed to a T.

Now that the vaccine was there, it was time to start giving it out to employees. And I went over to the location that Sanford has designated as one of its first vaccine centers. So I'm standing in a windowless room in the basement of the hospital that's usually used as a lounge for for veterans and today it has been repurposed into a makeshift vaccination station there are docs and nurses and scrubs and suits all wearing face masks lined up outside the door all wearing face masks lined up outside the door, each waiting to go up to a table where nurses in goggles are waiting and ready with syringes and paperwork to start meeting out this vaccine.

And I talked with a few nurses and doctors and other staff about what this day meant and whether this might be a turning point after so many truly terrible months. One second, let me get a little higher up here. Oh, sure. Thanks so much for hanging out with us here. And one of them was Dr. Richie Seth. Yeah, thank you for chatting with me. You know, we're just kind of really interested in hearing the perspective of, you know, frontline docs and nurses, you know, who

are working with COVID patients every day and seeing them and treating them about the significance of this vaccine. Yeah, sure. What have been for you, I mean, like, what's your day like right now? You work in the special care unit, is like right now? Um, you work in the special care unit. Is that right? Okay. Today I worked in the special care unit. Okay. So really what you're doing is you're first seeing your sickest patients. So today I have, uh, four very sick patients. Okay. So we go immediately to see them, um, see how they're doing. Are they getting better? Are they getting worse? Any medication adjustments that we can do? And then as with every one of our sick patients, we have goals of care discussion with every patient. So we talk about what's their plan,

what is our goal, and what happens if they get worse. What are those discussions like when you say what happens if they get worse? What are those discussions like when you say what happens if they get worse? I mean, it's got to be a difficult conversation. You know, if it was on the first day, you're right. It's a very difficult discussion as the patients experience a lot of fear. They're very nervous. But you'd be surprised after the third, fifth day tenth day and they're not getting better sometimes they'll tell us they'll come to this realization saying i don't want to be

intubated i don't want to be on a ventilator or they'll say i think i have a lot of fight in me i really need to to keep going i have an. It's a really interesting case where I had most of our patients are in private rooms, individual rooms, but in the beginning of our search, we had a situation where one of our critical care patients' rooms, they had two people in there. Okay. So one of my patients was, you know, he was in rough shape, but he was still maintaining his oxygen,

and we were trying to avoid intubation. So he was sitting in one room, side of the room, and across the side, he had seen three patients who had come in, intubated, and deteriorated and died in that room. Wow. And two of them had coded. So what a code means is that they needed CPR. And they needed lots of medications to prop them up. So he had seen how bad it can be if they don't get better.

Wow. So he came to me and said, I don't want that. I know what I want, and I don't want to be intubated. I don't want the CPR. Wow. That's a... It was a really... This was a really tough case.

Did he get better, or...? No. His case was one that gets pretty emotional because he became a friend. When you take care of these patients for 10 days, you develop a really special bond. For 10 days, you're talking about oxygen, but then you start talking about where are they from, their family. So I got to know and talk to his daughters, and he told me about his work and his life and where he was born. So you get to really know these people. And on the two days before he passed away,

we were FaceTiming with his daughter, and he was clinically not improving. He could tell that he was tiring out so as we were talking to his daughter you know he said um i think my time is up um i don't think i can fight anymore and then he had told her where he wanted his ashes to be spread and then he told both his daughters how much how proud he was of them they were both in college and so we were face timing and when did this happen i think it was a month and a half ago okay okay i mean to to experience that i mean and you you were working in the unit this morning yeah it sounds like right yeah and then to come to get this vaccine, I mean, it's just got to be a pretty...

It's a dichotomy, right? It's like, it's two ends of the spectrum. Yeah, yeah. You're still fighting a battle, and you're starting to see the horizon. That's why it's so emotional, because, like, do you remember in March when there was, like, when there was a sense of dread you know there was there was fear there was little hope out there but now there's there's a there's a sunrise in north dakota you'll see the greatest sunrises they're so beautiful and today is the

most beautiful sunrise um thank you so much and you're going to go get the shot now yeah I guess so thank you so much I hope you enjoy Fargo what are you leaving maybe tomorrow go to JLB

it's a good burger We'll be right back. Hi, is this Mona? Hi, hello, hello. On Monday afternoon, I spoke with Mona Mogura, an inpatient pharmacist in New Orleans. I know this is a really busy day in your hospital, and I believe that you have just ended a very long shift in your hospital. I wish. It ends at 8, so there's no worries at all. I will take any break. Well, thank you for spending your break with us. I will take any break.

Well, thank you for spending your break with us. Just so people understand how you fit into this historic day, tell me about the hospital where you work and tell us what you do there. Okay. So I'm an inpatient pharmacist here at Oshkosh Main Campus. Oshkosh Main Campus is in New Orleans. It's in Jefferson Parish. Oshkosh is very big in the city, but main campus is definitely the hub of it all. Got it. So you're a vital part of the New Orleans medical system, this hospital. Yeah, we're huge. We're one of the biggest

hospitals in this whole area. I'm pretty sure we gave the first vaccine in the state today. Well, that's why we wanted to talk to you because you are actually involved in administering the vaccine on this first day. I mean, and from what I can tell, you're involved in literally injecting the vaccine into the people you work with in the hospital from the pharmacy division of the hospital. And so you were literally giving people protection from the virus, which is a pretty extraordinary role to play. Yeah, I totally agree. We definitely feel as a whole, this is like the first proactive step towards, you know, just battling this whole thing.

Right. And you say proactive. In other words, everything else you have done has been kind of one step behind the virus trying to catch up with it and stop it. You're saying this is the first time you can actually do something to get ahead of it. the virus, trying to catch up with it and stop it. You're saying this is the first time you can actually do something to get ahead of it. A hundred percent. You know, a lot of people feel the vaccine's going to cure it all, fix it all. This is just one step towards the bigger picture. We're definitely still practicing wearing masks, social distancing. It's going to take a while, but I think this is a step in the right direction. It's been a long road. It's been long nine months, but yeah, we're so ecstatic. Well, let me just ask you about that long road for a moment. I want to get to what

it was like to actually administer this vaccine. But I'm curious what the pandemic has been like for you up to this point. New Orleans was hit pretty early and it was hit really hard. We've done a couple of episodes about the pandemic in your city. So just give me a sense of what it has been like from your perspective up until now. Yeah, you know, I mean, New Orleans is a big city. I think it was not in our favor, definitely after Mardi Gras was when this kind of heightened. And, you know, they've said that that's where a lot of it could have transferred. This is a port city, a tourist city. So we've definitely got hit pretty hard.

So we have come to work every single day. And especially in the beginning, no matter how people feel about it now, in the beginning, honestly, I think we were all terrified. And it was literally like every day I'm going into a hospital full of patients. You know, we were literally walking towards the fire every single day, day in and out,

especially having two elderly parents. It was a lot to, you know, go home and being terrified of maybe I'm going to bring it home to them. You know what I mean? So it's been a little exhausting. That's why this is definitely such an amazing day for all of us. We're just so excited to be here to finally have something, you know, substantial that we can offer the community. So tell me about this day, Monday, vaccine day, when it all starts to happen. Tell me about when you arrived at the hospital and what the scene was and what you did. Yeah, I mean, right when I arrived, it was actually funny. The vaccine was, you know, they delivered it at the dock and that's when we started. It was go time. So we were ready to go, you know, with the syringes and the cleaning utensils, the band-aids, and we headed towards the area that we were administering. And it was kind of just another day with a lot of

cameras. Could you tell me about your first patient, your first vaccination? I'm sure my first vaccination was a female. She was one of the nurses here at Ochsner. And of course, I always ask the patient the first question, which arm would you prefer it in? So I drew up one dose, you know, of course, clean the area and then just go ahead and stick them. How many people, Mona, did you vaccinate today? I wish I counted. I lost count about, I want to say about 20 to 30, but I'm at about 60 for now. And then after this call, I'm going to head right back there until tonight. Did you get the vaccine today? I did not.

So as a pharmacist, I'm not in direct care with COVID positive patients. So I'll be in the second round. So I am ready and waiting. If I could give it to myself, I would. But I will wait until the next phase. waiting. If I could give it to myself, I would, but I will wait until the next phase. I'm curious, when the day is over and you do have time to pause and really think about what it meant, what do you think that this day and what you did today will mean to you? I mean, just as my career, my pharmacy career, I mean, this is like the top of my license for

me personally. This is an amazing experience. I never thought I would play this role of vaccinating the first person in the entire state of Louisiana. So it's just mind blowing. You buried the lead here. That's a big thing to have done. I'm really trying, you know, it's honestly an honor to be here today to have been a small part of this huge process. Is this going to be your, your work and your life for the next foreseeable period of time delivering this vaccine? So, I mean, I still have shifts here that I need to work. So I'm still on the schedule to do my regular, you know, IV shift. But any minute I can get in the day, any, I'll work doubles until, you know, we can make a dent in this. But yeah, today and tomorrow I will be vaccinating. And then, you know, the rest of the week, I'm just going to go back to the pharmacy and do my job like I do every day.

But I think tonight when I slow down, I will definitely, I texted my husband what's for dinner. And he's like, what do you mean? Like, how was your day? And I was like, it's cool. I'll see you when I get home. So yeah, it's, it's weird. I think it's just a second nature. That's what we do every day. And we've been waiting for this day for so long that I was like, you can't mess this up. This is it. So it was pretty awesome. It's still pretty awesome. It's happening right now, you know? You know, we've all been waiting for this.

So, yeah. Well, what is for dinner? I don't know, but it better be good. It better be damn good. It better be good, yeah. You deserve it. Yeah, well, we're really thrilled to have met you. And I don't live in New Orleans, but I'm grateful for you.

So thank you. Yes. Well, we want you to come one day. So this is the whole point, you know. We're definitely trying to make it, you know, a bit of normalcy. We want our tourists back. We want the city back. We want everything, you know, to be the way it was.

Someday. Yes, yes. Well, thank you very much, Wanda. It was really wonderful to meet you. It was. Thank you so much. It was such an honor to talk to you. Okay.

Thank you. Good luck. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to nerdy. I will now announce the tally of the vote for the officer president of the United States. For Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, a Democrat, eyes 55, nose zero. In statehouses across the country on Monday, members of the Electoral College affirmed Joe Biden's victory, formally pushing him past the 270 required votes, despite an unprecedented

attempt by the president and his allies to delay, block, and overturn the process. In America, politicians don't take power. People grant power to them. In a speech a few hours later, Biden sought to appeal to Trump supporters, but rebuked the president for his ongoing failure to accept the results of the election. The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame. And Attorney General Bill Barr, who publicly broke with Trump over his claims of election fraud, is stepping down weeks before the end of the president's term. Barr's resignation allows him to avoid future confrontations with Trump

over both the election and Trump's plans for last-minute pardons, potentially of his own family members. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester and Michael Simon-Johnson with help from Alexandra Lee Young. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Larissa Anderson and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.