Dr. Myron Kung, a critical care physician, gets the COVID-19 vaccine from registered nurse Darlene Roberts as the vaccination begins for health care workers at the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System in North Las Vegas Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020.
Thursday, Dec. 17, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Dr. Jason Dazley doffed his white coat and hung it on one of the many hand sanitizer stands around the auditorium-turned-vaccination clinic at the VA Medical Center in North Las Vegas. A nurse injected and bandaged his upper arm with his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in less time than it took Dazley to unbutton and roll up the sleeve of his crisp plaid shirt.
He wants to help people past hesitancy over the vaccine, which rapidly came to market as the coronavirus pandemic has raged around the globe for most of 2020.
Dazley trusts the science.
“Certainly we have questions about a lot of things regarding the vaccine, but we don’t have doubt,” he said.
Two vaccines, one developed by Pfizer and the other by Moderna, have been approved for use in the United States. The Southern Nevada Health District received 12,675 doses of the Pfizer-developed vaccine earlier this week.
Nevada’s first shipment came early in the Monday-Wednesday window local health officials had prepared for. Most went to University Medical Center, which started inoculating its staff immediately.
Within two days, more hospitals valleywide joined the vanguard.
The VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System is part of the initial group of 37 Veterans Affairs medical facilities to administer the vaccine to its front-line staff. It received 975 doses, enough for all of the hospital’s first group of employees to get the first of the two required rounds.
Dr. Myron Kung, a pulmonary critical care physician and Dazley’s VA colleague, noted that the first known COVID-19 patient in Nevada was diagnosed at the facility.
The vaccine is voluntary but he said it is his privilege to receive it and he wants to lead by example.
Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center critical care nurse Jon Dimaya got the first of Sunrise’s roughly 2,000 initial doses Wednesday. He also wanted to show his colleagues how important it is.
“The virus’ job is to replicate,” he said. “It’s our job to try and stop that. It’s our job to keep everybody safe.”
Sunrise ran drills all day Tuesday. The next day, “hope arrived at 6:05 a.m. here at Sunrise Medical Center,” said chief medical officer Dr. Steve Merta.
At MountainView Hospital, Sunrise’s sister hospital in the northwest valley, Dr. Clarence Dunagan was the first to get the shot.
“This is going to be the key for us to get rid of masks, hopefully, and quarantine and lockdown. Living in Vegas, obviously, we need this more than any economy in the U.S … this is the way out,” said Dunagan, who is MountainView’s Department of Emergency Services chair.
For all their enthusiasm and optimism, health care professionals are keenly aware that the virus is still spiking here.
Nevada reported 2,138 new cases and a record 57 deaths Wednesday. The rolling positivity rate is 20.7%, which is down from its 21.8% all-time peak on Dec. 8 but only incrementally. The state’s top 10 highest positivity rates have all been above 20% and have all come this month, according to Nevada Health Response data.
The Nevada Hospital Association reported 2,008 people hospitalized statewide for COVID-19 as of Tuesday. Clark County hospitals had 1,550 of those patients, putting Vegas-area hospitals at 90% capacity with patients with all illnesses and injuries.
Of local COVID-19 patients, 329 were in intensive care. Las Vegas-area ICUs are at 78% capacity with all types of patients.
Dimaya pleaded with people to keep up with public health safeguards.
“Being on the front lines, it’s very difficult for us over the months and months and months to be able to do what we do and not have the support outside of the hospital. The public needs to understand that we’re trying to do everything that we can for you to keep everybody safe, to keep us safe,” he said. “When we ask you to mask, to wash your hands, to stay six feet apart, there is sound science behind it. Whether you believe it or not, science is science.”
