Local health care experts said they don’t have qualms about taking the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available, but still recommend residents continue to observe safety protocols even after they take it.
The experts shared their views while answering questions from residents at a virtual town hall meeting organized by Mayor Stan Booker to address a broad range of concerns about COVID-19, including vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna that are slated to be released to Oklahoma and other states. The doses are expected to begin arriving sometime next week, Gov. Kevin Stitt and Commissioner of Health Lance Frye confirmed Thursday.
Brandie Combs, the Oklahoma State Department of Health District 5 director of the 10-county region that includes Comanche County, said during a local virtual town hall meeting on Thursday that Oklahoma had been slated to receive its first shipment of vaccine from Pfizer today, but the delivery date was pushed back. She said she remains confident Oklahoma will have the vaccine available for its priority residents by Christmas, with those doses delivered to pre-determined sites where the state health department will direct their dispensing based on pre-set priorities, starting with front-line health care workers who are working most closely with COVID-19 patients.
“We expect to be able to move through the priority populations pretty quickly,” Combs said, of a partnership that will involve hospitals and other health care entities, as well as national pharmacies working with the federal government in a program vaccine program targeted to staff and residents of long-term care facilities.
Combs said Oklahoma health care experts expect to have a significant amount of vaccine available to adequately meet the state’s needs.
“It’s not a case of only 10,000 people in the state getting it,” she said, adding shipments of the Pfizer vaccine will arrive in Oklahoma every two weeks.
Combs said priorities remain front-line health care workers, followed by other health care workers, to include those who work in funeral homes and may handle patients who have died from the virus. The first phase contains an estimated 160,000 people; the second, expected to begin in early January, 750,000 people who include residents age 65 and older and those with underlying health conditions, followed by those in congregate living conditions (homeless shelters, prisons, or “anywhere a large group of people is living. That’s where we’ve had hot spots.”)
“We expect to move through phases pretty quickly,” she said.
Dr. Scott Michener, chief medical officer for Comanche County Memorial Hospital, addressed concerns that vaccine development was rushed and may not be safe.
Michener said while the technology used to develop the vaccine is new, the end result is that recipients will be given a little bit of genetic material from the virus to prompt the body to make the antibodies to ward it off. He said while much has been made of the fact the vaccine appears to be 90-95 percent effective, the bigger benefit is that it is almost 100 percent effective in preventing severe COVID-19, meaning it “prevents you from ending up on a ventilator or passing from it.”
Early studies indicate the vaccine has the same side effects as do flu and pneumonia vaccines: sore arm, body aches, low grade fever. Michener said several patients in Great Britain (where vaccines started earlier this week) had severe allergic reactions, but both were found to suffer from severe enough allergic reactions to carry Epipens.
“We now know we need to study more patients who are highly allergic and highly reactive,” Michener said.
Will that change his mind about taking the vaccine?
“We’re going to have to trust our scientists and take the vaccine,” he said, adding the only way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to take the vaccine “or everyone get sick. To get life to normal, we have to embrace the vaccine. Most of us are read to roll our sleeves up and take the vaccine.”
But, taking the vaccine doesn’t mean the safety protocols all drop away.
Combs said while it will take a while for the immune system to kick in, the vaccine also is a two-stage process: a second dose follows the first 21 days later (for Pfizer) or 28 days later (for Moderna). She said patients receiving the first dose will receive appointment cards for the second one. In the meantime, residents should continue to take already established precautions.
“We’re not out of the woods, but we do see the light,” she said.
