With Pfizer boosters now available locally, vaccinated head out for another shot

By Casey Harrison (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021 | 2 a.m.

Joanne Davie has seen firsthand how quickly somebody can take a turn for the worse if they aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19.

A hospital security guard, she’s seen people, even young people, come in with COVID, and “I’ve helped mortuary companies escort them out in black body bags because they weren’t vaccinated.”

That’s why the 61-year-old Henderson resident didn’t waste any time getting her booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine Tuesday. It was the first day the booster was available in Las Vegas.

“I personally feel a responsibility and obligation to the community to keep people safe, as well as myself,” Davie said.

She was one of several dozen people at a vaccine clinic at the College of Southern Nevada’s Henderson campus to get the Pfizer booster.

It is available to already-vaccinated people 65 and older, individuals as young as 18 with underlying medical conditions and those 18 and older with jobs that put them at high risk.

Booster doses of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have not yet been approved for such wide use. More than 400,000 Americans have received a third dose and nearly 1 million people have scheduled their booster, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday.

On Monday, Democratic President Joe Biden, 78, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, 79, got their boosters and encouraged others to get vaccinated.

“Boosters are important, but the most important thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.

Nearly 25% of eligible Americans aged 12 and older have yet to get a single dose of one of the vaccines.

In Nevada, 64.6% of those 12 and older have had at least one shot, with 55.4% fully vaccinated.

Steven Curtis, 48, of Henderson, was also at the CSN vaccine clinic Tuesday to receive his first shot.

Curtis said his employer was getting ready to mandate the vaccine and thought it was only a matter of time before it would be required in most public venues.

“I didn’t think it was going to come to, ‘Hey, you can’t go to a concert unless you show this passport’ or whatever,” he said. “I just think it’s coming, so I may as well get ahead of it.”

Biden recently announced he would direct the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop a rule requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require weekly COVID testing for employees not vaccinated. Some businesses are already requiring employees and customers to be vaccinated.

In Las Vegas, some concert venues require proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test, and the Raiders are mandating fans have the shot to attend games at Allegiant Stadium.

Stephanie Bethel, a spokeswoman for the Southern Nevada Health District, said she didn’t have information on how many booster doses were administered Tuesday.

“We encourage people who are eligible to visit one of the many locations in our community to get their booster dose,” she said.

“The booster dose is another step in ending the pandemic. However, this does not take us away from our primary goal of getting unvaccinated people to get vaccinated,” Bethel said.

With the more contagious delta variant of the virus spreading, Nevada is averaging 729 new COVID cases and 12 deaths a day, according to Nevada Health Response. Most of the cases and deaths are in the Las Vegas area.

Since the onset of the pandemic last year, more than 419,000 people in Nevada have contracted COVID, with more than 7,000 associated deaths.

“It’s brutally sad, what’s going on right now,” Davie said.

She said she would be happy to get a COVID booster shot every year if necessary, just like the seasonal flu shot.

“I trust that this shot is effective. I don’t have any qualms about it one way or another,” she said.