PEABODY — Employees in three local health and senior care centers have been vaccinated against COVID-19 even as the state tallies up its vaccination stock to determine how many more shots need to be given to Massachusetts residents.
Care Dimensions President and CEO Patricia Ahern said the vaccinations capped off a tough 10 months for employees working in the Rosewood Nursing Home and Rehab Center, Harriet and Ralph Kaplan Estates, and the Jeffrey and Susan Brudnick Center for Living, all located in Peabody.
“We are thankful for their help in giving our staff an extra measure of protection during this challenging time,” said Ahern.
Workers and clients in the three facilities were vaccinated last week.
“Our staff has worked side-by-side to bring hospice and palliative care comfort to our patients. I want to say a huge thank-you,” Ahern said.
A report last Thursday from the state Department of Public Health shows that, as of Jan. 12, a total of 347,450 doses had been shipped to Massachusetts, and 239,147 of those doses — a little more than two-thirds — have been administered.
The State House News Service reported that Massachusetts would need more than 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to fully inoculate everybody in the first phase of the Baker administration’s three-tiered plan.
“We are not holding onto any vaccine. Nobody’s holding onto any vaccine,” Gov. Baker said after signing a new hospital signage and safety law last Friday. “We have 660,000 people in phase one. We’ve only received roughly 400,000 vaccine shots to begin with. Those 660,000 all need to get vaccinated twice, they need to get dosed twice to be vaccinated. You do the math, that’s 1.3 million vaccine shots — excuse me, doses — to actually fully vaccinate phase one, which is supposed to end sometime in early February.”
Shots became available to first responders last week, and the next portion of phase one is set to begin next week, with vaccinations starting in congregate care settings including shelters, group homes and correctional facilities.
The state’s first large-scale vaccination site, at Gillette Stadium, is slated to open to first responders on Monday. Baker said he anticipates there will be four or five such mass vaccination sites set up around the state by the end of the month.
The combination of those locations, pharmacies, health care providers and community health centers “starts to look like the type of infrastructure that we’ll need to start doing thousands and thousands and thousands of these every day,” the News Service reported Baker saying.
City health statistics for 2020 indicate COVID-19 killed 221 Peabody residents last year, almost 90 percent of them persons aged 70 and older.
