Tufts frontline health care workers get Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine as more shipments arrive in Mass.

BOSTON — More Massachusetts hospitals are expecting their first delivery Tuesday of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and one hospital will give the first shots to some of their frontline staff hours after it arrives.

In Boston, Tufts Medical Center got its delivery just before 10 a.m. and gave the first doses to frontline workers at the hospital at 1:45 p.m.

UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester tweeted a photo just before 9 a.m. of hospital pharmacists unboxing the shipment, adding “It’s here... Amazing how much hope can be bundled in one small box.”

UMass Memorial getting 1,950 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday morning

Boston Medical Center was the first Boston hospital to get the messenger-RNA based vaccine, which Pfizer developed with the German biotechnology firm BioNTech. Nearly 2,000 doses in a plain white box from Kalamazoo, Michigan, were dropped off by FedEx early Monday morning.

Shortly after delivery to BMC, the 1,950 vials were pulled from a shipping bed of dry ice and placed into a refrigerator chilled to minus-71 degrees Celsius, the product’s required storage temperature.

BMC plans to begin vaccinating front-line employees on Wednesday by appointment, with an emphasis on those who have face-to-face contact with COVID-19 patients. Physicians and nurses on COVID-19 floors fit into that category, but so do food service workers and housekeeping staff.

Several other area hospitals, including Newton Wellesley and Lawrence Hospital, are also expected to get their first doses delivered Tuesday, are among the 400 health care facilities that will get their first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday.

A 96-year-old World War II veteran in Bedford became the first VA patient in the country to get the shot Monday.

The VA Bedford Healthcare system announced the milestone over social media, posting that Margaret Klessens, a resident of the Community Living Center in the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital received the shot at 12:07 p.m.

Tufts doctor calls it 'a miracle of science' as vaccine arrives, first frontline workers get doses

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