Lee Health administers its first COVID-19 vaccines

NOTE: The COVID-19 vaccine is NOT currently available to the general public.

Lee Health received its first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Gulf Coast Medical Center Tuesday morning.

Nurses and health care workers were the first to receive the vaccine during a press conference. Just after the vaccine arrived they were moved in deep freezers to be stored.

4,800 Lee Health front line workers will eventually get the vaccine. Doctors, nurses and staff who work in the COVID-19 units, the Emergency Room and Intensive Care are up first.

Those who work at the hospital have been seeing people come in and die from the virus for months.

Samara Marin is an ER nurse that describes her past few months dealing with COVID-19 patients as scary. “It was very scary. It was scary for patients. They were, and still, they are still very scared. We had patients that were scared to come into the hospital even though they were sick,” Marin said.

While it was scary, it’s fueled Marin to fight even harder for her patients. “The amount of people that I’ve seen gets sick and the people that I’ve seen get gravely sick. And some people, they had no health concerns whatsoever they got sick from it. That was scary and sad,” she said.

Samara Marin says it was not scary for herself but she was worried about her family. “That was scary for me. My mom was home and elderly, and I have kids. I was taking everything off before I went home. It’s quite scary,” said Marin.

Thing fear of the things she saw in the emergency room followed her home every day. She let the same feeling at work that she’d feel in her own living room, her kids’ playroom and in her mom’s room.

“She would tell me oh if I get this I’m gonna get really sick. It would be like ‘oh don’t worry, will deal with it,'” Marin said.

She was right. We will deal with it. That started with a simple shot and it wasn’t scary at all.

“I feel like this is the beginning of a hope of getting to maybe not completely get rid of the virus but, at least, get it down and not having people get so sick from it,” she said.

She’s just one of the many heroes who will get the shot that will give them the will to continue.

Watch the press conference below or click here.