COVID-19 In Pittsburgh: UPMC Optimistic Coronavirus Vaccines Will Be Available To Its Frontline Healthcare Workers By End Of January
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Leaders at UPMC said Tuesday they're optimistic their frontline healthcare workers who want a COVID-19 vaccine will be able to get one by the end of January.
UPMC is expecting a shipment of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and eventually Moderna.
In keeping with the CDC's Advisory Committee on Vaccine Practices' recommendations, UPMC will focus first on healthcare workers, then nursing home residents.
"Last week the CDC issued recommendations that healthcare workers be top priority to receive the new vaccine," says Dr. Graham Snyder, UPMC's medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology. "We need our healthcare workforce to stay healthy."
Before giving any shots though, UPMC is waiting for the FDA to grant emergency use authorization. Then for its own 92,000 employees, the COVID immunization will not be mandatory.
"Vaccination for healthcare workers will be voluntary," Dr. Snyder says. "We anticipate we will be able to provide vaccine to our front line healthcare workers who wish to receive it before the end of January."
In contrast, the health system requires universal vaccination against influenza.
"That is based on decades of experience with the influenza vaccine. Until we learn more and build on our own experience with this vaccine, it's not the right thing to make it mandatory," says Dr. Snyder.
UPMC is also having its own panel of virus and vaccine experts review the clinical trial data independently.
"Until they are satisfied that the vaccine is safe and appropriate for the people we plan to offer it to, we will not be injecting it into anyone's arm," he emphasizes. "Speed is important, but so is safety."
UPMC plans to give the Moderna vaccine to its nursing home residents, but that product is expected to arrive at some point after the Pfizer shipments.
UPMC says the vaccine will be made available to the public as soon as possible. But that could still be months even under the best-case scenario, says Dr. Donald Yealy, senior medical director and chair of emergency medicine.
Until then, "it's clear that we must continue the basic public health practices that we know protect all of us," Dr. Yealy says.
UPMC also announced it is receiving an allotment of monoclonal antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly. UPMC's own investigational monoclonal antibodies Ab1 and Ab8 will be entering the clinical trials stage soon, according to Dr. Yealy.
