AdventHealth begins COVID-19 vaccinations for frontline staff in Orlando

AdventHealth began administering the COVID-19 vaccine to its frontline workers in Orlando and Celebration on Wednesday. AdventHealth's chief scientific officer, Dr. Steven R. Smith, hailed the occasion as "a milestone."

This is the beginning of a massive rollout of the Pfizer vaccine on the part of AdventHealth.

AdventHealth will inoculate thousands of their physicians, nurses and staff who signed up for the shot, as well as distributing doses of the vaccine to other local care centers like HCA, Nemours Children’s Health System and Orlando Health.

AdventHealth is one of a small handful of Florida hospitals to get first dibs on the vaccine.

“We need to stop this pandemic,” said Susan Upper, nurse manager in the COVID-19 Progressive Care Unit at AdventHealth Orlando, who was among those inoculated on Wednesday. “We need an end to this. It’s been a tough nine months. We need to get ahead of this, and the only way to get ahead of it is to get vaccinated.”

AdventHealth expects more doses to arrive in the coming weeks so the staff inoculated today can get the required second dose.

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