Banner Churchill Community Hospital was one of the first facilities in Nevada to begin vaccinating its workforce, Tuesday morning. The Fallon hospital received 40 doses and vaccinated 10 of its health care workers each day since. 12 of them got the shot on Friday, thanks to approval of the sixth dose. Each vial of Pfizer's vaccine has five doses, but some actually have enough for six or seven vaccinations. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the extra vaccine for use. That allowed a total of 42 Banner Churchill employees to get the shot.
"I wouldn't have got this dose but they just got approval today to give the sixth dose and so now we can give people two extra doses, today," Matt West, Physician Assistant at Banner Churchill Community Hospital said.
The hospital was the first of Banner Health's hospitals to administer the vaccine. The company has 60,000 employees, nationwide, including 350 in Fallon. Officials say most of them are excited about the vaccine's availability.
"We are having people like 'Hey, is it my turn yet to go and get my vaccination?'" Rob Carnahan, CEO of Banner Churchill Community Hospital said. "So yeah, there's a lot of excitement. A lot of energy in the hospital, right now."
Many of the front line workers say they are taking the vaccine to protect their community.
"As a health care provider who sees people that are immunocompromised, I felt I had to get the vaccine to protect people around me," West said.
"We're out there, trying to save lives," Sharon Maxwell, Physician Assistant for Banner Health Center in Fernley said. "We don't want to pass this virus to anyone, inadvertently. We certainly don't want to get it ourselves."
Maxwell and Deborah Lee work at Fernley's clinic. They come into contact with people who have the disease, every day. That is why they say it is important for frontline workers to get the vaccine.
"We're getting quite a few people popping positive on their COVID test, so with Deborah and I working directly with patients we know potentially have COVID, it was very important for this shot," Maxwell said.
"We deal with COVID patients all day long, every day, and it will protect us as well as it will protect our non-COVID patients," Lee, CNA at Banner Health Center said.
Dr. Ricardo Garcia is an obstetrician and gynecologist at Banner Churchill. He says he was skeptical of Operation Warp Speed, wondering if the race to create a COVID-19 would be rushed. He has done his research and decided the vaccine is safe. He got his shot, Friday.
"The people that approve it and monitor, they're good people," Garcia said. "They know what they're doing, so I feel it's very safe."
The small-town hospital is dealing with many of the same problems as other hospitals, during the pandemic. Carnahan says at one point, it had twice as many ICU patients as available beds. Staffing is also a challenge because some of them have contracted the virus or had to quarantine.
"We don't have a lot of providers," West said. "There's two of us that work in the walk-in clinic. If one of us goes down, we're not even open our full hours of the week."
"It's going to take more people to care for more patients that we have," Kathy Mansell, Registered Nurse at Banner Churchill Community Hospital said.
Banner Churchill also relies on larger hospitals in the Reno-Sparks and Carson City areas to send patients who need more critical care. There are so many hospitalizations in those facilities that there have been times when they could not accept the patients.
"We try to keep those patients here in this geographical, close proximity as much as we can but we have had to send some patients down to one of our Banner facilities down in Tucson and in Colorado," Carnahan said.
Staff also knows the challenges that many COVID-19 patients face. Mansell says isolation and loneliness are two of the hardest things that patients have to overcome.
"They get to see the nursing staff, they get to see the CNAs and they get to see the doctor, and that's really the only people that they get to interact with, so it can be a very lonely process," Mansell said.
Mansell says she shows them compassion, spends time with them and holds their hands, knowing the emotional toll of the disease.
The sickness, death and sorrow that the coronavirus cause are all reasons why the hope everyone gets the vaccine.
"This isn't the flu," Garcia said. "It's a serious disease. The ICU's are overwhelmed all over the country and so I'm taking care of patients who may or may not have had the disease."
"It will be better for America if we all just get it to keep us all safe and to open our country back up," Lee said.
Banner Churchill officials are hoping for 100 doses of the Moderna vaccine, next week.
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