Hundreds of Hackensack Meridian Health Ocean Medical Center staff members have been inoculated against the novel coronavirus, days after the hospital, located in Brick Township, NJ, received its first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine. The hospital, which employs 2,400 team members in addition to 850 physicians, plans to inoculate all employees who wish to receive the vaccine within the next three weeks.
Among those receiving the vaccine is ID Care’s Dr. Sukrut Dwivedi. “It gives you a little bit of relief, a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “As an infectious disease physician, this [pandemic] has been a big part of my life over the last nine to 10 months.”
Dr. Dwivedi also hopes that those not fully sold on the safety of the vaccine will come to fully understand how advanced the immunizations are. “There’s always been angst about vaccines, in terms of safety and side effects. When this vaccine came out, there was a lot of talk, ‘Was this vaccine produced too quickly? Is it safe? What about side effects?’ My response to that is this technology is not brand-new. This is not something that was developed in 2020. This has been in the process for a number of years. But before we had a global pandemic, I’m not sure the average lay person, including myself, was looking into the newest breakthroughs in vaccine development.”
On his decision to get the vaccine, he had this to say: “I reviewed the available data and concluded that the benefit far outweighed the risks. I not only have responsibility to myself, but to my family, patients and the community and I wanted to do my part to bring about the end of the pandemic and a return to normalcy.”
Dr. Dwivedi encourages all individuals to get vaccinated and to ask their healthcare providers questions if they feel uncomfortable. “There’s an old saying, ‘knowledge is power.’ If you have the knowledge, the decisions you make will be powerful decisions. So, I’d encourage anyone with questions to seek someone out and ask those questions, so we can increase the number of individuals who are vaccinated.”