SALEM — Approximately 200 healthcare workers and first responders received COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday afternoon at a clinic held by the Boards of Health of five neighboring towns.
Workers from Swampscott, Marblehead, Salem, and elsewhere, who were eligible for the vaccination under Phase 1 of the state’s rollout, came to the site in a gymnasium at Salem State University.
“For over 15 years, we’ve been doing emergency preparedness as a region,” said Swampscott Public Health Director Jeff Vaughan. “This group worked out well.”
Suzanne Darmody, Salem’s public health nurse, did vaccine inventory at the clinic, measuring out doses from the vials shipped by Moderna with Marblehead Public Health Nurse Tracy Giarla. Darmody said that each vial held approximately 10 doses. The two handed the filled syringes off to Judith Ryan, the public health nurse from Danvers, to distribute to the volunteers at each of four vaccination stations, and the process began again.
Darmody described the group of nurses, along with those from Beverly and Swampscott, as a “traveling vaccination team,” saying that they had had plenty of practice.
“We’ve been doing this for years at our flu clinics,” Darmody said, “but there’s obviously a lot more involved here.”
All vaccine recipients had to pre-register for their appointment. As they arrived, they verified they were eligible for the vaccine in Phase 1, then went to a table to answer screening questions, such as whether they had received any other vaccines in the past 14 days, to ensure that they could receive it. Finally, they went to another table, where volunteers administered the shot. After being injected, patients were required to wait 15 minutes in a socially distanced waiting area to ensure that they had no adverse reactions before heading home. All told, the process took approximately 25 to 30 minutes for each patient.
Patients who received the first dose of the vaccine will have to receive one more dose in 28 days.
Swampscott resident Charlotte Carroll, who works in community mental health, was one of the first to be vaccinated at the clinic. She said that she had originally been signed up to receive the vaccine at Gillette Stadium, but had rescheduled her appointment to the clinic so she wouldn’t have to drive as far. Although her sign-up was more straightforward the second time around because she had already input her insurance information, she said that it was not intuitive, and she hoped that the state would improve the process for future recipients.
“I’m very excited to have gotten the vaccine,” she said. “I hope everybody is able to get signed up.”
James Hurley, a Marblehead resident, said that he works for a diagnostics company that administers COVID-19 tests. He said the shot had felt fine and wasn’t too sore.
“We want to get the vaccine and fight this pandemic as best we can,” Hurley said. “Everyone needs to do their part.”
Robert Shuman, another Marblehead resident, said he had been waiting excitedly to get the vaccination, and it felt great to finally do so. He said he thought that the vaccine was the most important way to fight the virus.
“My father was a pediatrician,” Shuman said. “He said that the greatest advantage was not medicine, but public health.”
