Tampa Nurse Receives Florida’s First Coronavirus Vaccine

TAMPA, FL — A Tampa nurse was the first in Florida to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at a Monday press conference at Tampa General Hospital. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine for emergency use in the United States on Saturday.

Vanessa Arroyo is a frontline nurse at TGH’s Taneja Family Global Emerging Diseases Institute, a new facility dedicated to battling coronavirus and other infectious diseases.

Gov. Ron DeSantis referred to Arroyo as “Patient Zero for the state of Florida as it comes to the vaccine.”

The first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine were received by TGH, UF Health in Jacksonville and the Memorial Healthcare System in Broward County on Monday, he said. Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and AdventHealth Orlando will receive shipments of the drug on Tuesday. About 100,000 doses will be distributed to these five health care systems.

Another 60,000 doses will be delivered to CVS and Walgreens, and nearly 20,000 will go to the Department of Health for long-term care facilities, DeSantis said.

Because of “production issues,” the state will receive less doses of the Pfizer vaccine than originally anticipated, he added.

Once the Moderna vaccine is approved by the FDA, likely this week, the state will receive 365,000 doses of it. Depending on whether Florida receives all its Pfizer doses or not, the state will get between 700,000 and 1 million total vaccine doses.

Still, he said, “This is a really, really significant milestone in terms of combatting the coronavirus pandemic.”

DeSantis added, “Today we will have shots going in arms. We will have health care workers getting vaccinated much sooner than anybody would have anticipated just six months ago.”

Health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities will be the first Florida residents vaccinated. After that, those 65 and older, as well as individuals with more than one comorbidity will receive the vaccine.

On what DeSantis called “a historic day,” COVID-19 cases continued to rise in Florida. The DOH reported 8,334 new cases for Sunday, bringing the total number in the state to 1,134,383. Florida is one of only three states, joined by California and Texas, to have more than 1 million total cases since the start of the pandemic.

Deaths are also on the rise in Florida. The state has seen 20,271 total deaths from COVID-19 since March.

And hospitalizations are increasing in the state, as well. In Florida, 58,269 residents have been hospitalized with coronavirus.

In Hillsborough County, which is seeing a surge in the virus, hospitals are running out of beds. As of Monday, Tampa General Hospital had only three intensive care unit beds available for coronavirus patients, while AdventHealth Tampa and Memorial Hospital only have one.