Tracy Sondag has been on the front lines of COVID as a nurse manager at Carle BroMenn Medical Center in Normal, where 23 coronavirus patients are now hospitalized.
On Saturday, Sondag was at the front of the line. At around 6 a.m. she became one of the first people at Carle BroMenn—and in Bloomington-Normal—to receive the COVID vaccine.
“It’s kind of surreal, because that was not the intention at first for me to be the very first one, it just kind of fell into place that way,” said Sondag, whose worked at BroMenn since 2008. “And so I feel great, and I’m really excited to be one of the first employees at Carle BroMenn to get it.”
She earned the privilege. She manages an inpatient nursing unit where a majority of Carle BroMenn’s COVID patients go, as long as they don’t need critical care.
They’ve been busy. Carle BroMenn has had at least 20 COVID patients hospitalized since the start of November, when the second wave hit McLean County. Bloomington-Normal hospital capacity reached its lowest point about a week after Thanksgiving, when just 3% of total hospital beds were available, the McLean County Health Department said.
“We’ve seen and dealt with a lot of anxiety and fear over that,” said Sondag, of Washington, Ill. “I’ve also been there to support my nurses that are experiencing the same feelings, who are caring for these patients every shift.”
One of the hardest parts, she said, was enforcing the hospital’s visitor policy during the pandemic.
“While I fully support the visitor restrictions and the ‘why’ behind it, it was particularly hard as a nurse to have to turn patients’ loved ones away while they were in the hospital,” Sondag said.
McLean County wasn’t initially expecting any Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses this week, because it’s not among the Top 50 counties in Illinois with the most deaths per capita.
But late Friday, the health department said it unexpectedly received a “small allotment of unused doses” from a surrounding county. OSF HealthCare, which started administering the vaccine in Bloomington on Friday, said it came from Knox County.
Jeff Kayfish is a respiratory therapist at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center. He has a wife and a child at home and he has feared for their health. He said he was excited to get his shot and had no concerns about the safety of the vaccine, despite it being developed in record time.
“I trust the process," he said in a statement. "I’ve been vaccinated against a lot of things after being in the military so this was just another vaccine you gotta get.”
Sondag told WGLT later Saturday morning she felt great and that the actual dose hurt less than the flu shot. She urged the public to stay vigilant about following public health guidelines related to social distancing and mask-wearing.
“Even though we have this vaccine and it’s very exciting, and we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we still need to do our due diligence of safe practice during this pandemic,” she said.
And more good news is on the horizon: On Friday the FDA formally authorized a second vaccine for emergency use — this one developed by Moderna. The biotech upstart won authorization for use in adults following extensive federal analysis of the vaccine, which the FDA found to be 94% effective at preventing the disease.
“This arrival marks a very important step in the fight against COVID-19 and moving towards a healthier future," Carle BroMenn President Colleen Kannaday said late Friday. "While we are still in the tunnel, we can begin to see the light at the end."
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