'First Step Toward the End of this Nightmare'

The Seattle Times reports UW Medicine's vaccination roll out in the article "Front-line medical workers get first doses of coronavirus vaccine in Seattle", describing the relief and mixed emotions felt by many healthcare workers after receiving their dose.

Dr. Thuan Ong associate professor, Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine is one of the first Washingtonians to receive the coronavirus vaccine, Dec 15, 2020.

 “I feel very privileged,” said Ong, who since February has ventured into long-term care facilities where the most vulnerable have suffered — from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and from the lonely inhumanity that accompanies it.

And so he felt sorrow also, for colleagues who have been at times “afraid and desperate,” for patients lost, and for those whose pain is forthcoming, as cases of coronavirus surge while they wait for the vaccine.

“That’s the weight we’re all feeling; the sadness that we can’t get it to them yet,” Ong said in an interview later.