FORT SMITH, Ark. — All hospitals in the River Valley and Northwest Arkansas have received their first shipments of the Pfizer COVID19 vaccine and on Tuesday (Dec. 15) many hospitals began giving those vaccines to frontline workers.
Dr. Jason McKinney is the Medical Director for the intensive care unit at Mercy in Rogers. He was the first at his hospital to receive the vaccine Tuesday.
He says he feels a bit of relief after getting the vaccine because he feels like he’s been running a marathon for months now not knowing when this pandemic is going to end but knows he still has some months left of running.
“With this vaccine, we feel that as this gets out there and as people immunize themselves, that there is going to be less spread in the community, less infected people and hopefully this becomes something that’s actually manageable in the near future,” Dr. McKinney said.
Mercy in Fort Smith received its first shipment of 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine just after 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.
A frontline doctor was also among the first to receive the vaccine. Dr. Candy Lindsey is the hospital’s Emergency Room and Trauma Director for the critical access hospitals. She says it is great to get to be a part of letting people know that she trusts in the vaccine.
“We all need to be on board or else we are all going to be stuck in this horrible cycle of more and more people getting it and being in our hospitals and it is so frustrating as a physician to be able to take care of everybody," Dr. Lindsey said. "The idea of care rationing is horrible. This is how we stop those things from happening."
Dr. Michael Thames is the Director of Pharmacy at Mercy in Fort Smith. He says after Dr. Lindsey they continued vaccinating healthcare workers all day and will continue Wednesday (Dec. 16).
He says the vaccine for the critical access hospitals in Booneville, Ozark, Paris and Waldron will come through pharmacies that have contracted through the state.
“They are scheduled to be delivered on Thursday and all of those nurses were part of the vaccinator training today, so Thursday afternoon those rural hospitals, their front-line co-workers will begin to get doses,” Dr. Thames said.
Baptist Health in Fort Smith and Northwest Health in Springdale also both started vaccinating frontline workers Tuesday. Washington Regional in Fayetteville says it will start giving the vaccine within the next 24 hours.