After nine months of illness, shutdowns and unrelenting viral spikes, some relief came to the San Franciscans on Tuesday, when the first round of COVID-19 vaccinations was administered in the city.
Primary health care workers at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital received the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine this morning, after 2,000 doses arrived at the hospital Monday.
Mayor London Breed shared footage of a vaccination administered to a health worker at the hospital on Tuesday morning, writing: “This pandemic is in sight. Let’s do everything we can to protect each other until we get there.”
Elsewhere in town, Elizabeth Fernandez, UCSF senior representative, told SFGATE that the hospital will receive the vaccine Wednesday and begin administering it Thursday.
More good news for Californians arrived Monday night, when Governor Gavin Newsom announced via tweet that a second shipment of the Pfizer vaccination was en route to the state.
“Just got word from Pfizer – CA now expecting 393,000 additional doses of # COVID19 next week. Excellent news as we begin to vaccinate health workers and long-term residents nationwide.” Newsom wrote.
In Davis, CBS reporter David Begnaud shared footage of the vaccines being pulled from the freezers Tuesday morning and headed for the vaccination room.
However, San Francisco’s COVID-19 spike is still “terrible,” said Director of the Department of Health, Dr. Grant Colfax, who reported via a virtual briefing Monday that city health officials have seen an average of 200 new cases a day. He also stated that the number of available hospital beds in intensive care units in the Bay Area has dropped from 26 percent to 17 percent in the past week.
“If the hospital count continues to rise at the current rate, San Francisco will be in the intensive care unit without beds in three to four weeks,” said Colfax.