More Kansas City area hospitals receive vaccine doses

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    JOHNSON COUNTY, KS (KCTV) — COVID-19 vaccine doses continue to roll into the Kansas City metro area and the hospitals that serve it.

Children’s Mercy Hospital Kansas in Overland Park, Olathe Health, AdventHealth Shawnee Mission, Menorah Medical Center and Overland Park Regional Medical Center received the vaccine on Wednesday.

This year has been difficult for healthcare workers who are often relying on cell phones and I-pads to help COVID-19 patients stay in touch with their families. “We are tired. We are stressed and we’d love for this to come to an end,” ICU Charge Nurse Menorah Medical Center Julie Christopher said. “This is that first step.”

At Menorah Medical Center, nurses and doctors are thankful for large windows in many of their ICU rooms. “Our ICU is on the ground level and we have big windows in almost every room,” Christopher said. “So, we’ve done a lot of visiting through the windows but until you see a child with their hand on that window and their parent in the bed. There’s nothing like that.”

Christopher received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday. To her, it was much more than a shot in her arm. “I woke up this morning, actually, full of hope for the first time in a long time,” Christopher said. “Today I just kept thinking of the families and all of the patients. The ones that we’ve lost and the ones that recovered.”

“I was thinking about, you know, my family,” Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Menorah Medical Center Andrew Dalton said. “To know that eventually, I’ll be able to come to work and not have to worry about picking up this virus and taking it home to my family, to my parents to my grandparents.”

During the first wave, more than 1,000 HCA Midwest Health healthcare employees at Menorah Medical Center and Overland Park Regional Medical Center who work in the hospitals’ intensive care units, emergency departments, and neonatal intensive care units will receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. They will receive a second dose 21 days later.

“From the data that I’ve reviewed, this vaccine is safe and effective with very minimal side effects and I would encourage the public, if they’re offered the vaccine, that they should certainly consider it,” Chief Medical Officer Menorah Medical Center Steven Kaster said. “In the short term, it doesn’t take away our need to mask and social distance.”

HCA Midwest Health is expecting a second wave of vaccines to arrive early next week for their Missouri hospitals which includes Belton Regional Medical Center, Centerpoint Medical Center, Lee’s Summit Medical Center and Research Medical Center.

Lawrence Memorial Health also received doses of the vaccine.

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