Healthcare workers will be among the first to receive a coronavirus vaccine

Gab­by Espos­i­to  Dec. 4, 2020

Each day Abby Kin­sel­la pre­pares to fight when she arms her­self with a mask and shield. Her shield is a thick plas­tic face cov­er­ing, her bat­tle­ground is the Bridge­port Hos­pi­tal emer­gency room, and her fight is for the lives she will help save as a nurse in a pandemic.

Accord­ing to Kin­sel­la, she is not tired of help­ing oth­ers in the bat­tle, but she is tired of wor­ry­ing about her own pro­tec­tion against the virus for the sake of oth­ers’ health. “It’s scary being around both fam­i­ly and patients as the num­bers rise again,” she said. “This is the main rea­son I am more than will­ing to get the vac­cine when one comes out.”

Kinsella’s hope for the vac­cine may not be far fetched like it was months ago. Accord­ing to the New York Times, the drug mak­er Pfiz­er said this week that its coro­n­avirus vac­cine was 95 per­cent effec­tive and had no seri­ous side effects. The Times also stat­ed that anoth­er drug com­pa­ny, Mod­er­na, has report­ed promis­ing results as well.

Kin­sel­la, 22, nev­er antic­i­pat­ed a pan­dem­ic when she chose to study to become a nurse at Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty, she said. After grad­u­at­ing in the Spring, she didn’t hes­i­tate to con­tin­ue on to work at the hos­pi­tal in the trench­es of Covid-19, she stated.

Amidst the sec­ond wave of the pan­dem­ic, Kin­sel­la stat­ed that the cas­es com­ing into the Bridge­port Hos­pi­tal have picked up. Accord­ing to her, the hos­pi­tal knows what to expect, now. “We are more pre­pared for deal­ing with Covid patients, now com­pared to a cou­ple months ago,” she said.

Jen­nifer Fos­ter, 52, is anoth­er nurse who has wit­nessed the increase in cas­es dur­ing the past cou­ple weeks. Fos­ter works at the New Mil­ford Hos­pi­tal. “There are more Covid patients in the last few weeks, though not as many intu­bat­ed as last time,” she said. “We feel more pre­pared and more con­fi­dent now. Also, the knowl­edge that a vac­cine is com­ing helps.”

Kin­sel­la agreed with Fos­ter not­ing that the idea of a vac­cine being avail­able soon, eas­es some of her fear. “I’m per­son­al­ly will­ing and excit­ed to get the vac­cine because of how much I am exposed every day.”

“I have always believed in the impor­tance of get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. I believe in this for myself and also my chil­dren,” Amy Ller­e­na, 50, the Risk Man­age­ment Coor­di­na­tor at the Dan­bury Hos­pi­tal in CT, said. She has worked in the field for almost 30 years. Ller­e­na is a moth­er of three chil­dren whom she would also want to get the vac­cine, she stated.

Fos­ter is also a moth­er. “The two of them are old­er than 18 so it would be up to them, but I would encour­age them to get the vac­cine once it becomes avail­able to them,” she stated.

Despite Fos­ter and Ller­e­na men­tion­ing want­i­ng their chil­dren to receive it, the two of them will be the first of their fam­i­ly to get it. Accord­ing to Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Stu­dent Health and Well­ness Med­ical Direc­tor Dr. Ellyssa Eror, the CDC indi­cat­ed health­care work­ers will be among the first to be receiv­ing the vaccine.

Fos­ter and Kin­sel­la stat­ed that their pri­or­i­ty as health­care work­ers has gen­er­at­ed more con­ver­sa­tion on the job about the vac­cine. Fos­ter stat­ed that she had to take a con­sen­sus at work. “I think most of us said that, yes, we would take it,” she said.

Kin­sel­la stat­ed that the news has been a lot of the talk among her and cowork­ers. “We have def­i­nite­ly all been talk­ing about the vac­cines at work late­ly,” she said. “Most nurs­es are like me and feel excit­ed about the vac­cine, but there are still some who have mixed feel­ings. I don’t think there is any­one who is out­right opposed to it,” she stated.

The nurs­es who are unsure about the vac­cine are in the com­pa­ny of a lit­tle under half of Amer­i­ca. A recent poll from CNN showed that only 51 per­cent of Amer­i­cans would be will­ing to get this vaccine.

“I can under­stand why peo­ple are sus­pi­cious, but they shouldn’t be,” Anton Ben­nett stat­ed. Ben­nett works as a researcher in a bio­log­i­cal and bio­med­ical sci­ence lab locat­ed in Connecticut.

“I would take the FDA approved and safe­ty test­ed vac­cine because it was made in a con­cur­rent way in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the FDA which is why it came out so quick­ly,” Ben­net said. Accord­ing to him, this is just the first part of why the vac­cine process has hap­pened so fast.

Accord­ing to peo­ple sus­pi­cious of the vac­cine includ­ing UConn stu­dent Kaley Emmerich, 21, and her fam­i­ly, the quick tim­ing is why they won’t be get­ting the vac­cine. “The quick­est vac­cine ever made before this took a lot more time than this one. I am just scared there will be bad impli­ca­tions or effects in the future, she stated”

When asked about this, Ben­nett explained why he trusts the fast process.  “Covid test­ing was more par­al­lel com­pared to oth­er test­ing which is usu­al­ly more sequen­tial. This means that instead of wait­ing for each result to come back before start­ing anoth­er, they just over­lapped them. Also, some vac­cines start­ed off with a lot more knowl­edge and devel­op­ment because they were based on SARS COV‑1 and oth­er sim­i­lar Covid virus­es which allowed more advanced progress in cre­at­ing a vac­cine,” he said.

Ller­e­na stat­ed that she believes peo­ple hav­ing views like Emmerich is in part because of false infor­ma­tion. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly, right now there is so much ‘fake news,’ it is hard to trust,” she said, “but in my pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al opin­ion, I think not tak­ing the vac­cine would open a per­son to addi­tion­al risk.”

Accord­ing to Ller­e­na, the major­i­ty of her col­leagues trust vac­cines. “I think being in our field, we believe in the sci­ence behind vac­ci­na­tion,” she said. Those that are not in the health­care field may not under­stand the impli­ca­tions of not get­ting it. Most will not have the option of get­ting it right away, any­way, how­ev­er they will need to get it at some point, health pro­fes­sion­als said.

“The only way to achieve herd immu­ni­ty is through wide­spread vac­ci­na­tion, so although health­care work­ers will be among the first to be vac­ci­nat­ed, it will be impor­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty at large to become vac­ci­nat­ed as soon as the vac­cine becomes wide­ly avail­able,” Eror stated.

An infec­tious dis­ease researcher and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for a lead­ing clin­i­cal tri­al at Saint Louis Uni­ver­si­ty,  told Pop­u­lar Science,“We’re not going to get this virus under con­trol until either we get a vac­cine or it infects 80 or 90 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, and the lat­ter is an out­come we don’t want because a lot more peo­ple will die.”

“There is no rea­son why peo­ple shouldn’t take it. If a lot don’t they will prob­a­bly all end up get­ting sick and it will take longer for Covid to not be around,” Ben­nett said.