COVID jabs delivered, vaccination program set to kick off

After a three hour-wait, it took 68 seconds for pharmacists at Melbourne’s Monash Medical Centre to dig their first COVID jabs out from dry ice.

The Pfizer vaccine arrives at Monash Medical Centre. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

After a three hour-wait, it took 68 seconds for pharmacists at Melbourne’s Monash Medical Centre to dig their first COVID jabs out from dry ice and place them in a -80C freezer before Monday’s vaccination effort gets under way.

The first 5000 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were delivered by courier to the hospital in Clayton in Melbourne’s southeast on Sunday about 2pm. It was the moment infectious diseases expert and head of the centre’s COVID response Rhonda Stuart had been waiting for.

“I didn’t realise there would be so much excitement … we have been working really hard on this for the last few weeks — long hours in preparation,” Professor Stuart said. “It’s quite amazing really that it has only been a year since we saw that first patient.

“That’s amazing for science … we now have a vaccine.”

First Pfizer vaccines arrive at Monash Medical Centre, Clayton @australianpic.twitter.com/Ifgcj3Iqp5

— Angelica Snowden (@ang3snowden) February 21, 2021

About 140 nurses will deliver the vaccine to an initial 5000 “priority A” Monash healthcare workers from 7.30am on Monday, followed by 10,000 “priority B” workers in the next few weeks.

Emergency departments, intensive care workers and staff who work in the COVID ward are first in line.

Monash Health director of pharmacy Sue Kirsa has overall responsibility for ordering and distributing the vaccines.

“Very early in the morning, our staff will pull (the vaccine) out of the fridge and put them into a vaccine portable fridge, take them over to the clinic and reconstitute the vials and draw them up into syringes,” Associate Professor Kirsa said.

“Like with any vaccine, a bit of a sore arm afterwards is quite common … some people may actually experience a bit of a headache and a bit of fatigue and some muscle aches and that is to be expected as we develop an immune response,” she said.

Angelica Snowden