SARASOTA, Fla — Doctors Hospital of Sarasota received its first shipment of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Today they began vaccinating caregivers deemed highest risk.
“I think it’s kind of surreal,” said Chief Nursing Officer Todd Haner.
“We’ve been wanting for this so long and to get it on Christmas Eve is kind of exciting,” Haner said. “You know it’s probably the [best] Christmas gift I could give to my staff.”
Looking back to the beginning of this pandemic, Doctors Hospital of Sarasota actually treated the first hospitalized COVID-19 patient in the state of Florida.
“The end of February, I remember it well,” Haner said. “We got a phone call that we had a positive patient and we kind of thought it must be a mistake, and then we realized that it wasn’t and we mobilized the leadership team.”
“We didn’t expect it, we weren’t really prepared for it and I don’t think anyone was,” Haner said.
The respiratory therapy team who treated that patient will be among the first to receive the vaccine. These caregivers will be receiving the vaccine almost 10 months to the day the first patient was diagnosed.
The vaccine is not mandatory, but Haner says they have plenty of doses to vaccinate their whole staff.
“I want to be a leader, I want to be that person who steps up and says, this is the right thing to do,” Haner said. “I want to protect my family, my friends, my community and especially the people that I work with on a daily basis and the patients.”
Doctors Hospital says they administered almost 100 vaccines today. They will be doing this several days a week for the next few weeks until all caregivers who want a vaccine have the chance to get one.
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