LANSING, Mich. – At McLaren Greater Lansing’s main campus on Thursday, Dawn Chapel, an intensive care unit registered nurse with over 30 years of experience, was the first to be vaccinated.
Dr. Linda Peterson is McLaren Greater Lansing’s chief medical officer. For her, “it is a very exciting day. It’s a day of hope for all these health care workers that have been on the front line for many, many months.”
McClaren got 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine here. System-wide, McClaren expects close to 5,000.
Across town at Sparrow Hospital’s main facility, the first shipment of nearly 2,000 doses arrived and the first shots were being administered. Todd Belding is system director of pharmacy. “Oh, it feels great,” Belding stated. “It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is there, like we can see the light. We still have a long tunnel to go through. It’s going to take a long time to get enough vaccination into people to get that herd immunity that we need so that we can go back to the new normal life, but it’s great to be started.”
The hospitals plan to vaccinate frontline workers systematically so that no single unit is low on staffers due to side effects that some may experience. Both hospitals planned to vaccinate five health care providers on the first day Thursday, before ramping up distribution in the coming days.
