COVID-19 vaccine is a step back to normal life, Tarrant’s first vaccinated person says
The first people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Tarrant County are optimistic that the pandemic will soon come to an end.
Chandler Cummins, an ICU nurse at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southwest Fort Worth, said the last nine months have been physically and emotionally exhausting as she and her colleagues tend to COVID-19 patients in the ICU.
“These patients are here for weeks at a time and they don’t seem like they’re getting better,” Cummins said. “You’re doing all you can day after day — they’re still just not healing.”
This fall has been especially grim for Fort Worth area health care workers as Tarrant County reached highs in hospitalizations and cases. Cummins was the first person in Tarrant County to receive the vaccination on Tuesday, and it left her with the hope that things would soon return to normal.
For her, the shot was quick and she just had a sore arm for a while, which is common. In three weeks, she will receive a second vaccination of the long-awaited Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which was authorized for emergency use last week.
But while the vaccine is a step in the right direction, Cummins said it doesn’t change anything right now. She still has to tend to COVID-19 patients and will be for the foreseeable future. She said the fight against the -19 pandemic won’t end until the majority of people take the vaccine.
Tarrant County has reported 126,245 COVID-19 cases, including 1,055 deaths. In the last two days, the county has reported more than 3,000 cases.
Kerim Razack, a pulmonologist at Texas Health Southwest Fort Worth, fears the holiday surge could overwhelm an already exhausted medical team.
“It’s not over yet, not by a long shot,” he said.
Razack was vaccinated at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday and experienced body aches and nasal congestion eight hours after receiving the vaccine. Now he feels back to normal. He never felt like he was in danger because of the vaccination, he said.
As the vaccine starts to roll out, health experts have said some mild to moderate side effects are common, such as fatigue, swelling, pain, redness at the injection site, and sometimes a fever that resolves within about 24 hours. There have been a few cases of severe allergic reactions.
Texas Health Resources received its allotment of 5,850 doses at its central pharmacy in Arlington on Tuesday. Hospitals in Tarrant County have been allocated more than 18,500 doses.
It is expected that the vaccine won’t be available for the public until the spring.
More shipments of the vaccine are expected in the coming weeks as the state is expected to receive more than 1.4 million doses for December, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 6:17 PM.
