UMass Memorial expecting 1,950 COVID vaccines Tuesday

Photo | Grant Welker UMass Memorial Medical Center's Memorial Campus in Worcester

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By Grant Welker

UMass Memorial Health Care expects to receive 1,950 doses of a coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday, with priority given first to frontline caregivers.

The Worcester-based hospital system is among the first anywhere in the country to begin receiving the highly anticipated vaccinations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency approval for a vaccination from pharmaceutical company Pfizer late on Friday.

Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester and MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham and Natick will also get its first doses Tuesday, but a spokeswoman was not able to give exact dose amounts.

"We are hopeful that we will be able to immunize all healthcare workers working in areas that are high risk for COVID exposures in the first few weeks of immunizations," spokeswoman Rhiana Sherwood said.

Both UMass Memorial and Saint Vincent are due to begin vaccinations Wednesday.

Milford Regional Medical Center said it expected 975 initial doses but didn't have a date set yet for their delivery.

In Rhode Island, the state with the worst current rate of infections, Rhode Island and Newport hospitals will begin offering the vaccine Monday, according to The Providence Journal. In New England, hospitals in Boston, Hartford and New Haven are also receiving the earliest doses, according to news reports in those places.

UMass Memorial has said it will first immunize frontline caregivers who have direct or indirect exposure to coronavirus patients or infectious materials. They'll be followed by high-risk patients, and then the rest of UMass Memorial's patients and then the broader community.

UMass Memorial President and CEO Dr. Eric Dickson said in a staff memo on Wednesday he enrolled in a clinical trial for the Pfizer vaccine himself and urged all healthcare workers to get the vaccination.