The swamped intensive care units and emergency departments at many American hospitals have little flexibility these days for employees to be out sick. So it came as a relief that some of the hundreds of frontline health care workers who received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine Monday were able to return to work the next day with just a bit of soreness at the injection site.
In interviews Tuesday, six vaccinated frontline workers said they had no significant side effects.
Fernando Pires, a 60-year-old maintenance worker who cleans rooms in the emergency department at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, said he was not feeling anything other than a lot of pain in his arm. It was a small annoyance, he said, considering the peace of mind the vaccine gave him after months of coming to work despite being at risk himself, as someone with diabetes and asthma.
When his boss called him to ask if he wanted to be in the first round of vaccine recipients, Mr. Pires said, “I didn’t even think twice.”
At Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, Dr. Mercy Dickson, a 35-year-old emergency medicine resident, said she was feeling good, even after working night shifts before and after receiving the vaccine.
“I have a little bit of soreness on my right arm where I got the shot,” she said. “But otherwise, I feel as I felt before.”
After months spent alongside Covid-19 patients who struggled to breathe, were isolated from family members, and died from the virus, Dr. Dickson said the vaccine was a first step for her toward healing. And as a Black doctor, she said, she especially hopes it will make a dent in the disproportionately deadly toll the virus has taken on Black Americans.
“Hopefully, someone sees me — someone who looks like them — and is encouraged to get their own vaccine, and we are able to change positively the trajectory of people’s lives and minimize the suffering and pain that families have to go through,” she said.
Luciana Thornton, a pharmacist at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita, Kan., said she was surprised by how good she felt the day after receiving her shot, given what she had read about the vaccine’s potential side effects.
“Some people have fever or chills, and I have had none of that,” she said. “A lot of people I’ve talked to feel pretty good. Some people have had headaches. I feel a lot better than I expected to.”
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