Registered Nurse Chantal Branco received Lehigh Valley’s first COVID-19 vaccine shot in a short, but emotional ceremony at Lehigh Valley Health Network - Cedar Crest Dec. 17.

Branco hoisted a sleeve of her blue medical uniform as Nurse Lindsay Jagde Dougherty administered the vaccine with an injection into Branco’s upper left arm.

Branco is the managing director of one of LVHN’s intensive care unit facilities. She received the vaccine under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization that establishes precedence as to who will get the COVID-19 vaccine first.

The ceremony was carried live over LVHN’s Facebook page.

When asked what getting the vaccine means to her, Branco said, “It’s an exciting moment both for me and everyone who have worked so hard to get this vaccine ready for use.

“It’s very humbling, I’m very honored,” Branco said with an emotional catch in her voice that was somewhat muffled behind her medical face mask.

“I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“What is it like for you and your colleagues to be on the front lines?” Dr. Joseph L. Yozviak who was conducting the ceremonial interview asked.

“Well, firstly, it’s an honor to be a nurse and first defender especially now,” Branco said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.

“It brought us together in ways that I was never suspecting. Hopefully, we move forward with proper social distancing and washing hands and somehow get back to normal.”

Yozviak asked Branco what her hope was.

“I hope for increased awareness and more education for people to understand how important this day is and the impact that it has had on health care and the community.”

“The vaccine doesn’t mean that the pandemic is over,” Yozviak said addressing the public. “After people receive your vaccination, you should still take steps to reduce COVID-19 transmission such as social distancing, wearing a mask and hand washing.”

“How can we trust that the vaccine is safe after the clinical trial moved so quickly?” asked an off-camera moderator.

“I think we all recognize that the trial has moved fast,” Yozviak said. “And that’s all due to the unprecedented emergency that we’re all in with this pandemic. I want everyone to know that everything that we were supposed to do in any standard medical trial was still done throughout the course of these clinical trials. We’re going to be following people for another two years after the second vaccine dose and continue to gather information to demonstrate the ongoing safety and the effectiveness of the vaccine.”

Yozviak said major retail pharmacies would be working with long-term care facilities to administer the vaccine to residents.

He said, “Because we are not certain how long immunity lasts after an episode of disease with COVID-19, it is going to be recommended that people who had COVID-19 previously do get immunized.”

LVHN received the vaccine earlier Dec. 17 according to information provided by hospital authorities who said, “We will be vaccinating our front-line colleagues immediately.”

A spokesperson for the health care nonprofit said LVHN was a clinical trial site for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The shipment of vaccine received Dec. 17 at LVHN contained enough vaccinations for 975 LVHN personnel to receive their first of two needed doses of the vaccine. LVHN has, according to information released, “created a tier-based approach to vaccinate colleagues who work in roles with a high risk for exposure to the [COVID-19] virus.”

Yozviak is an infectious disease and internal medicine doctor at LVHN who officiated at the important milestone event in the effort to find a vaccine for the pandemic which, as of Dec. 17, has directly or indirectly killed 434 Lehigh County residents, 370 Northampton County residents, 13,200 Pennsylvania residents and 308,000 U.S. residents this past year.

The distribution plan or priorities for the subsequent resupplies of the vaccine was provided by the National Academy of Medicine, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and PA’s Department of Health. One set of priorities is for health care workers, emergency medical services workers, first responders and residents and staff of nursing homes or congregate care facilities; they will receive the vaccine first.