Nurse gets New York's first COVID-19 vaccine as U.S. rollout begins

New York on Monday inoculated its first healthcare worker, an intensive care unit nurse in Queens, with the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, marking a pivotal turn in the U.S. effort to control the deadly virus.

Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, an early epicenter of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a livestream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“It didn’t feel any different from taking any other vaccine,” Lindsay said. “I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

Minutes after Lindsay’s injection, President Donald Trump sent a tweet: “First Vaccine Adminstered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”

Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York, operates some of the select hospitals in the United States that were administering the country’s first inoculations of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside trials on Monday.

The vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95% effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.