With the recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine by the FDA, the first phase of COVID vaccinations for frontline healthcare workers has begun to roll out.
Prisma Health Chief Ambulatory Medical Officer Dr. Saria Saccocio said that, in Greenville, this first shipment of vaccines will mostly go to frontline healthcare workers at Greenville memorial and will be followed with boosters for those workers two weeks later.
Due to limited supplies, it’s expected to be a several months before the vaccine is made available to the general public.
“It will take December through January, and likely, realistically speaking, in part of February too get all healthcare workers vaccinated,” said Dr. Saria Saccocio. “And then of course that next step is moving to essential care workers that will spread into February and March, and likely April. And behind those essential workers, then we have others who are at risk, and then reaching the general public.”
Dr. Saccocio said officials involved in vaccine distribution have predicted the vaccine won’t actually be available to the general public until sometime in the spring or even summer.
Prisma Health received its first shipment of nearly ten thousand COVID vaccines Tuesday and did an initial 22 vaccinations of frontline Upstate and Midlands healthcare workers before rolling out the rest of the vaccines to their workers starting Wednesday.
Prisma’s Dr. Saccocio, Dr. Helmut Albrecht, and others all said during a press zoom meeting that the vaccine is not meant to replace CDC mask and social distancing recommendations but to work alongside them to prevent spread of the disease.
“This is not going to replace all the other things we’re doing. This will work in tandem with those. Nobody should stop washing their hands. If you should mask, you should mask even if you’ve had the vaccine,” said Dr. Helmut Albrecht, the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “We know it’s going to prevent a majority of clinical illness and severe illness, but we don’t know how much of asymptomatic infections and spread it will actually reduce. So it’s going to be important that this is part of our efforts, not the entire effort.”
