Doctors at Hartford HealthCare will be first in line to get a COVID-19 vaccine and vouched for the safety of the main vaccine candidates Tuesday at a pandemic briefing.
“We’re going to be the first people who are going to take it,” said Dr. Patrick Troy, chief of pulmonary critical care at Hartford hospital. Hartford Hospital. “We’re going to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to this vaccine.”
Troy spoke along with other HHC top doctors to answer questions about the vaccine and urge residents to get the shot.
“We have to get out there and tell people this good news, we have to convince people that this makes sense for them,” Troy said.
Even amid the pandemic’s latest surge, the serious medical consequences of getting COVID-19 have dropped out of the headlines, said Dr. Samuel Pope, medical director of critical care at Hartford Hospital.
“A lot of the suffering from COVID has been hidden from the public,” Pope said. “This is nothing like any influenza any of us has ever seen.”
Although treatments have improved and fewer patients require ventilators or become critically ill, medical providers are still in reactive mode and are looking for a game-changer, Troy said. The main vaccine candidate from Pfizer is a scientific achievement “parallel to man landing on the moon,” he said.
“The science behind it is sound,” Troy said. “The vaccine’s not only really effective, it’s safe.”
Side effects were reported in fewer than 2% of those who took the Pfizer vaccine and all reported were minor. The technology, which involves synthesized molecules of messenger RNA in a lipid coat, sidesteps the risks associated with vaccines that use actual virus particles, Troy said.
Dr. Ajay Kumar, HHC chief clinical officer, said that the first doses of the vaccine, once approved by the FDA, are expected in Connecticut in a few weeks and will go to healthcare workers, first responders and nursing homes.
All who want the vaccine should be able to get it by May or June, Kumar said. The vaccine is administered in two doses given 21 days apart.
