You are reading

Elmhurst Hospital Becomes First NYC Public Hospital to Vaccinate Staff

Elmhurst Hospital employee William Kelly is vaccinated for COVID-19 (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Dec. 16, 2020 By Allie Griffin

Elmhurst Hospital — once seen as the epicenter of the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. — became the first public city hospital to administer the vaccine in the five boroughs.

The hospital was the scene of a photo-op Wednesday as two staff members were vaccinated in front of elected officials and members of the media.

The occasion was quite a different picture than at the height of the pandemic — when images of body bags being loaded onto trucks from Elmhurst Hospital made national news. The hospital saw 13 patients die of coronavirus within a 24-hour period in mid March.

One of the staffers vaccinated Wednesday, Veronica Delgado, a lead physician’s assistant in the Emergency Department, compared the moment to “that first bit of sunlight in the morning after a very long, dark and frightening night.”

Delgado and William Kelly, a service aide in the Environmental Services Department, were the first staff members to receive the vaccine within the city’s 11 public hospitals. On Monday, a Queens nurse at a private hospital became the first American to get the COVID-19 vaccination.

The two Elmhurst Hospital employees are among the more than 1,600 health care workers vaccinated for COVID-19 in the city since Monday.

Elmhurst Hospital workers celebrate the first COVID-19 vaccinations of two staff members (Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

All staff members at Elmhurst Hospital are expected to be vaccinated in the next three weeks, the head of the city’s public hospital system, Dr. Mitch Katz, said.

“How great that we can be here to make the pain go away, to be able to protect the heroes of Elmhurst,” Katz said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was no more fitting place to administer the vaccine than Elmhurst Hospital.

“We’re celebrating such an important moment here — the first ever vaccination at a New York City public hospital,” he said. “And there’s no more fitting place than here. This is the place where it should be because this is the heroic place.”

The testing line outside Elmhurst Hospital in April (Photo: Queens Post)

email the author: news@queenspost.com
No comments yet

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Dead body of adult woman pulled from the freezing waters off Rockaway Park Friday morning: NYPD

First responders pulled the body of a woman from the frigid waters off Rockaway Park on Friday morning, and investigators are working to determine how she died.

Police from the 100th Precinct in Rockaway Beach responded to a 911 call at 8:44 a.m. reporting a person in the Atlantic Ocean in the vicinity of Beach 109th Street and Shore Front Parkway, where the body of an adult woman was recovered from the surf, unconscious and unresponsive.