COVID Vaccine: Answering Your Questions

The first COVID-19 vaccinations in Illinois have been administered to health care workers in Chicago and Peoria. Five health care workers, including emergency room nurses, rolled up their sleeves and received shots Tuesday morning at Loretto Hospital in Chicago. Shortly after, five others received shots at a Peoria hospital. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls it a “truly exciting and important moment” in the city's history, but cautions that widespread vaccine availability is still months away. Health care workers elsewhere in the country started receiving shots of the vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech on Monday.  - Associated Press

The 21st was joined by one of the first health care workers in Illinois to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the Chief Medical Officer at Southern Illinois University Healthcare, and also in the Department of Family and Community Medicine Medicine at the SIU School of Medicine in Springfield.

Guests:

Marina Del Rios Rivera, MD, MSc, Director of Social Emergency Medicine and Associate Professor of the Department of Emergency Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago 

Harald Lausen, Chief Medical Officer at SIU Healthcare and Department of Family and Community Medicine Medicine at SIU Medicine 

Brian Laird, Manager of pharmacy operations at OSF Heart of Mary Medical Center, Urbana

Prepared for web by Zainab Qureshi. 

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