BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – Employees at Hospice of Southern West Virginia recently received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The frontline healthcare workers came quickly after nursing homes to receive it, and are just some of many workers in line to receive the first wave of doses.
Tyler Jordon, a representative with Hospice of Southern West Virginia says that protecting their healthcare workers is one of the first steps to protecting everyone involved.
“We don’t want our end of life patients to get any more sick than they already are, we don’t want their loved ones getting sick, we don’t want our frontline workers’ families to get sick. We don’t want to jeopardize the health of any of our patients,” Jordon said.
There were roughly three-dozen employees at the hospice house that received the Moderna vaccine. They say administering it was very simple. It took only seconds to administer the shot, and receiving it was virtually painless.
“Went in, everything was processed rather quickly, maybe less than a ten minute wait. The vaccine itself was painless. Little bit of soreness at the site of injection, but other than that I had no other symptoms,” said Chief Nursing Officer Landon Blankenship.
None of the employees that received their first doses reported any major side effects, which is a good sign of things to come as the vaccine becomes available to more people.
“The main reason that we are so excited to get the vaccine is we want to protect our staff, our patients and their families. We need to do all that we can to decrease the spread of this infection, and hopefully we can start to see some normalcy to life resume once more people are vaccinated,” Blankenship added.
