San Ramon Hospital Workers Receive COVID-19 Vaccine

SAN RAMON, CA — Health care workers at San Ramon Regional Medical Center began receiving Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine this week.

Emergency medicine Dr. Renzo Cardena was the first to receive his dose Wednesday. The room cheered and applauded for him, said hospital spokesperson Krista Deans in an email.

For many health care workers, the vaccine has been heralded as a sign of light at the end of the tunnel that is the coronavirus pandemic. As of Thursday, the San Ramon Valley communities of Alamo, Danville and San Ramon had been roiled by a combined 2,153 COVID-19 cases and 15 deaths linked to the coronavirus.

California officials have decided that initial doses of the coronavirus vaccine will go to high-risk health care workers.

On Friday, vaccine administration began for health care workers at Stanford Health Care — ValleyCare in Pleasanton. ValleyCare has received 975 doses.

Dr. Grace Lee, a member of Stanford's vaccine committee, said in a Stanford Health Care news release that people who have concerns about the safety of the vaccine could find solace in the fact that federal regulators are rigorously reviewing them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use Dec. 11 after a 44,000-person clinical trial that found the vaccine was 95 percent effective. The trial is ongoing.

"I think it would be normal for any patient to ask me, 'Are you going to get that vaccine? Will you get your family members vaccinated?'" Lee said in the news release. "If I can answer yes to both questions, hopefully the people who are asking will also feel a sense of trust in the vaccine."