UofL Health care workers first to receive second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Five University of Louisville Health care workers were the first to receive a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in the state of Kentucky. Now, Dr. Jason Smith and four of his fellow frontline workers rolled up their sleeves for their booster shots.

The vaccines currently available from Pfizer and Moderna require two doses to be fully effective, spaced a few weeks a part.

Dr. Smith and his peers received their first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine about three weeks ago, making history in the Commonwealth. Since then, WAVE 3 News has kept in touch to learn if any have contracted the virus or had long-term side effects. So far, so good.

“We’ve got right around 12,000 employees,” Dr. Smith said. Of those, 7,500 are clinical care in some way shape or form. So those are our priority, those are the first to be given out. But if we continue to have the vaccine deliveries that we have seen, particularly last week and what we’ve seen this week, we’ll continue to move through.”

UofL Health has administer nearly 2,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccines to it frontline works so far. Dr. Smith said they received another shipment of 5,000 doses that they plan to administer over the next two weeks.

Dr. Smith said 195 workers have either declined or postponed their vaccination. It surrounded questions with pregnancies, or the worker already contracted the coronavirus. So he said they wanted to let others receive the vaccine first.

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