Pikeville hospital gets region’s first vaccine shipment

By TONY FYFFE

BSN Editor

PIKEVILLE – Eastern Kentucky’s first shipment of COVID-19 vaccine arrived Tuesday at Pikeville Medical Center (PMC).

PMC was one of seven Kentucky hospitals slated to get the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines Tuesday.

“The Pfizer vaccine, which we believe to be 95 percent effective, has now been authorized in this emergency for us to start vaccinating individuals,” Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday. “The vaccine started to be shipped from the factory and a significant portion landed in Kentucky today. Kentucky is going to play a major role in getting this vaccine to people all over the eastern United States through UPS’ Worldport. We in the commonwealth are excited to be a big part of defeating this virus all over this country. We now believe that the first individuals will be vaccinated here in the commonwealth tomorrow morning. We are less than 24 hours away from the beginning of the end of this virus.”

Kentucky received 12,675 vials of the vaccine, which were allocated to 11 regional hospitals across the state, including PMC. Five doctors and nurses at UofL Health in Louisville were given the first doses Monday.

PMC CEO Donovan Blackburn said at a press conference Friday that the hospital was chosen for the vaccine after meeting three criteria, including submitting a “tremendous amount of paperwork,” having adequate cold storage capacity for the vaccine and having at least 1,000 employees.

Blackburn said PMC has two ultra-cold storage freezers that have the capacity to hold up to 10,000 doses of the vaccine, which he said was shipped on pallets of 975.

The first doses were scheduled to be administered immediately to healthcare workers Tuesday, with a second dose to be given 21 days later, he said.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 is “a very sensitive” vaccine that has to be shipped in “ultra-cold storage, which is dry ice,” Blackburn said.

Beshear said the arrival of the vaccine in Kentucky was “most exciting day that I’ve had, I think that we as a commonwealth have had, since March 6, when we had our first diagnosed COVID case.”

“We are going to defeat this virus in 2021,” the governor said. “This is a moment that we have hoped for and prayed for. The effectiveness of this Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine that’s going to follow is nothing short of a modern medical miracle.”