When vaccine becomes available to the public, please take it
Dear Editor,
Not since the 1950’s when children were lined up for the new oral polio vaccine in the midst of the polio epidemic have I seen such a massive effort to immunize those at risk for a serious disease. Friday (Dec. 18), at the Mercy Hospital in Watonga, employees of the State Health Department gave the first doses of a vaccine against the SARS Co2 virus that has been causing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (CoViD19). A good number of employees lined up for their first dose of the first vaccine to receive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) (Dec. 11) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The whole operation was wellplanned and implemented. Employees filled out their registration forms, received information about the vaccine, received a dose of vaccine at immunization stations, and then were monitored.
With 639 labproven cases (84 currently active) in Blaine county and a total of 2,383 CoViD19 related deaths Oklahoma as of Dec. 28, we clearly need these vaccines to augment the preventive measures of physical distancing, hand hygiene, and wearing masks to control this pandemic. With 1729 patients with CoViD19 currently hospitalized statewide, many of our hospitals are at capacity and health care providers are exhausted. This compared with only 85 influenzarelated deaths in Oklahoma last season.
Both of the vaccines that have received EUAs from the FDA appear, in large trials, to be highly effective and to have good safety profiles. I have read the materials on both vaccines published in peerreviewed medical journals and listened to the lengthy deliberations of the advisory committees to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and FDA. We owe a debt of gratitude to each of volunteers in the trials, the expert advisory committee members, and the FDA and CDC, for their work in making the vaccines available. In just over two weeks after the EUA was issued, almost 30 thousand Oklahomans and over 1.2 million persons nationwide have been vaccinated.
Still, because this virus is so contagious and each infected person may infect several others, authorities believe about 70% of the population must have immunity against this virus in order to quell this pandemic. When the vaccines become publicly available, I encourage all persons for whom the vaccines are recommended to get the vaccine.
Working together, we eliminated polio from the United States. We can control CoViD 19 too.
Joe P. Bryan, MD
Fellow, Infectious Diseases Society of America Watonga
Watonga