Inside a large conference room at the Hilton Miami Dadeland on Baptist Health South Florida’s campus Wednesday, employees from the healthcare system lined up to receive their doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine under an abstract light fixture designed to illuminate the types of corporate events that went away in March.
Jose Ojeda, a pharmacist who works in the emergency department, was one of the Baptist employees lining up for a dose that could bring him closer to that pre-pandemic world. He was receiving it two days before his 29th birthday. Ojeda said he had hoped to get the vaccine before then — a first step in putting a scary year behind him.
“People say they are scared of getting the vaccine, but they should be more scared of COVID-19,” he said. “I work in the ER, so I see a lot of things. You start thinking, ‘It’s not worth it.’ ”
Baptist Health was the third South Florida hospital system this week to invite reporters to document a historic moment: its healthcare workers getting inoculated against a virus that plunged the world into a pandemic less than a year ago.
The first two events were held at public hospital systems that were part of the “Pfizer five” — the first in Florida to receive the vaccine — Memorial Healthcare System in south Broward County and Jackson Health System in Miami-Dade.
While Memorial and Jackson are inoculating their own employees, they’re also sending thousands of doses to other hospitals, including Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, where the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine crossed the causeway sometime before 7 a.m.
The vaccine rollout in South Florida comes with rising cases and hospitalizations in the backdrop. Broward County on Wednesday added the most COVID-19 cases in more than a month, with 1,371 confirmed. Miami-Dade reported 2,375 cases, topping 2,000 for nine of the last 10 days, hovering around 9% test positivity for new cases.
Hospitalizations remain elevated in both counties, with 914 patients in Miami-Dade and 513 in Broward being treated for COVID-19.
Unprecedented cooperation
The doses at Mount Sinai came from Jackson, which set aside 1,500 of the 19,500 doses it received Tuesday morning for Miami Beach’s hospital. Jackson also set aside 3,000 doses for its partner, UHealth, the University of Miami’s hospital system.
As of Wednesday evening, it was unclear how many doses Jackson would use for its front-line healthcare workers this week. The public hospital network had already inoculated 2,356 employees in two days.
What’s left over could wind up at any hospital in Miami-Dade County.
“Our shared goal is to vaccinate all of the healthcare workers in our county’s hospitals who are interested in receiving the vaccine,” said Lidia Amoretti, a Jackson spokesperson.
Amoretti anticipated an active weekend of inoculations.
“And, if necessary, we will go into early next week,” she said.
At least one of Jackson’s partner hospitals is eyeing multiple shipments, and likely multiple vaccines, in the coming days.
Angel Pallin, chief operating officer at Mount Sinai, said that he anticipates receiving additional vaccine doses next week — most likely the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine that is expected to be federally authorized for emergency use by Friday.
“[Jackson was] gracious enough to share with other organizations in South Florida so that we can get really a head start on inoculating our employees here,” Pallin said.
South Florida hospitals have gotten used to that level of cooperation, but it was relatively unheard of before March. Since then, area hospitals have worked together on everything from personal protective equipment for front-line workers to laboratory testing and clinical observations — most of it led by a weekly CEO call, according to Pallin.
“We’ve all benefited from that,” Pallin said.
Memorial, the first to receive the Pfizer vaccine, said it estimates using 7,000 doses and sending the rest to five other Broward hospitals.
‘A month of miracles’
Healthcare professionals across South Florida hospitals shared amazement this week at just how quickly the area’s front-line workers are getting inoculated, less than a year after health officials in China uploaded the genome sequence of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Dr. Roy Weiss, the chief medical officer at UHealth, said the hospital system is planning to administer 500 doses of the vaccine a day this week until they run out of doses — working through the weekend. Weiss said it was “absolutely exhilarating and exciting that we have been able to realize this moment.”
“This is December, it’s not coincidental. This is a month of miracles for everybody,” Weiss said. “A month where people get together and show how much they can accomplish by working together as a team.”
About a week before he was standing at a podium heralding the arrival of a COVID-19 vaccine in a sun-baked parking lot outside Baptist Health South Florida’s main campus, Dr. Sergio Segarra was giving his condolences to two colleagues who just lost their mothers to the disease.
Segarra, an emergency medicine physician and the chief medical officer at Baptist Hospital of Miami, had just received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine moments before he appeared in front of the cameras. The physician sounded emotional as he urged Miami residents to take the virus seriously, and get vaccinated when they have the opportunity.
“I have witnessed firsthand the devastation that COVID has caused on our community, our patients, our staff and our staff’s loved ones,” he said. “ … I know what COVID-19 will do.”
Ben Conarck is a reporter covering the coronavirus pandemic for the Miami Herald. He joined as a healthcare reporter in August 2019. Previously, Conarck was an investigative reporter covering criminal justice at The Florida Times-Union.
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