Coronavirus vaccine developments coming fast in recent days

In the early weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, seemingly each passing minute brought a new development -- an event canceled, a school shut down, a travel ban ordered.

The past week has felt similar, except most new developments involve a vaccine for the coronavirus -- new populations receiving their first doses, additional entities receiving vaccine doses, organizations announcing new plans to distribute their allotments.

Regional plan

The region's first vaccine doses were given this week at SoutheastHEALTH. The organization is one of the state's pre-selected sites to receive and distribute Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine. The hospital has received 2,925 doses of the vaccine and has reserved about 1,800 of those for specific organizations.

On Thursday, SoutheastHEALTH updated its distribution plan:

• Wednesday and Thursday: innoculated about two dozen employees to test its delivery processes
• Friday: vaccinated 90 employees at its health center in Dexter, Missouri, allowing the organization to test its transportation processes
• Monday: plans to innoculate about 450 employees at its Cape Girardeau facilities
• Tuesday: plans innoculate about 450 employees at its Cape Girardeau facilities
• Tuesday and Wednesday: plans to innoculate about 700 employees at Saint Francis Medical Center
• Wednesday: plans to innoculate about 100 employees of Perry County Memorial Hospital in Perryville, Missouri.

Saint Francis

On Friday, Saint Francis Healthcare System chief executive officer Maryann Reese, in a social media video presentation, said the organization has partnered with Broadway LTC Pharmacy of Cape Girardeau, a pharmacy that deals with long-term care facilities, to secure vaccine doses for some of its employees.

Reese said 20% of its employees in each department will receive the vaccine at first, limiting the potential staffing effects of any reactions to the vaccine.

"We want to make sure we have the number of employees we need to take care of our community," she said.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. added a second COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal Friday, boosting efforts to beat back an outbreak so dire that the nation is regularly recording more than 3,000 deaths a day.

Much-needed doses are set to arrive Monday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized an emergency rollout of the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health.

Both the new Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech shot require two doses several weeks apart. The second dose must be from the same company as the first.

Virus numbers

Cape Girardeau officials reported eight virus-related deaths Friday, pushing the county's total number of COVID-19 deaths to 105. The county's total number of virus cases eclipsed 7,000 on Friday (7,057), and there were 1,515 active cases in the county as of Friday.

Scott County reported seven virus-related deaths Friday (3,306 total cases, 822 active cases, 59 deaths).

Perry County, Missouri, reported two virus-related deaths Friday (2,027 cases, 127 active cases, 20 deaths).