DENVER — For one state lawmaker and several dozen medical personnel in Denver, immunization against COVID-19 represented “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“I legislate based on science. I trust the science and I trust our public health experts who spend their life doing this,” said Rep. Kyle Mullica, D-Northglenn, after his vaccination at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center on Wednesday morning. “That’s why I’m here today, to show that it’s safe and this is the way we’re gonna get through this and I’m at the front of the line because I trust the science behind this.”
Mullica is an emergency room nurse who, prior to the pandemic, sponsored bills to try to boost Colorado’s low rates of childhood vaccination. He said he did not know what to wear for the immunization, but settled on his work scrubs because his status as a frontline health care worker was the reason he was receiving one of the first doses of the groundbreaking vaccine.
“The excitement is overwhelming. Seeing the harm that has come to our community from this and to be actually able to see that light at the end of the tunnel is so exciting because it’s been hard,” he said. “Really this is the solution to it. This is how we're going to get out of this.”
St. Luke’s received 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, for which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization on Friday. The vaccine comes via a two-dose inoculation, and St. Luke’s expects the shipment of the second dose within weeks.
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