University Hospital in Newark Readies for Vaccine

Six hospitals in New Jersey will be the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and any health care worker who is exposed to patients with COVID will have the opportunity to volunteer to take it. 

University Hospital in Newark has set up an assembly line system in hopes of vaccinating 600 people a day in a large lobby where workers will check in, get a health screening, and then the shot followed by a 15-minute observation period to handle any adverse reactions. 

“That is going to be quite the endeavor,” said Shereef Elnahal, CEO of University Hospital, the only public hospital in New Jersey. “It's not only making sure that that operation is like clockwork, that staff and every patient is scheduled, that the cycle time is efficient just to make sure folks get through and the schedule is adhered to. But we also have to tie that to the very complex logistics of the vaccine itself.”

The vaccine can only be stored for five days, and once it comes out of the super cold freezer, it must be used and cannot be re-frozen, Elnahal said. 

The hospital plans to vaccinate for 16 hours a day, six days a week. Elnahal said he’s confident the process the hospital has set up will run efficiently, but the one thing he worries about is the large number of staff who are reluctant to be among the first to take the vaccine.

“My most important task right now is to make that appeal and say ‘you not only will have brought us to this point successfully and heroically, but you will be the ones to get us across the finish line.’”