A Queens critical-care nurse on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic became the first person in New York — and the entire country — to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in a national rollout Monday.
“I’ve been waiting for this day forever,’’ said Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center who also lost relatives to the virus.
“Working the front lines alongside my team, I saw a lot of pain, suffering and death,’’ Lindsay told reporters after receiving the first dose on camera around 9:20 a.m. at the Queens hospital.
“After the first wave we saw, there was no way we could go through this again,’’ Lindsay said of the crippling pandemic — which has left “my cousins [without] their family members for Christmas this year.
“Dark, that’s one way to describe it. Dark, painful — I feel like this day would never come, so today I feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Applause broke out after Lindsay was jabbed in her left arm with the potentially life-saving shot — with the nurse participating in the clapping.
Lindsay — who immigrated to the US from Jamaica in the 1980s and worked her way up through the city’s nursing ranks to become director of patient care service at the hospital — said she volunteered to set an example for her staff and for skeptics in her community.
“As a leader in the health system, I think it was very important for me to take the vaccine, to lead by example. I wouldn’t ask my staff to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” she said.
“And for a minority community that is skeptical to take the vaccine, I want to let them know it is safe to take — because the alternative is dark, it’s painful, it’s suffering and probably death.’’
Gov. Andrew Cuomo watched the Northwell Health worker’s vaccination by livestream — and later said it will be one of 10,000 inoculations that occurred across New York on Monday.
“This vaccine is exciting because I believe this is the weapon that will end the war,” the governor said. “It is the beginning of the last chapter of the book, but now we just have to do it.”
The governor later tweeted out a photo of the nurse with the caption, “This is what heroes look like,” referring to her as “the FIRST AMERICAN to get vaccinated in a non-trial setting.”
The vaccine — the first approved for use by the US government and developed by Manhattan-based drugmaker Pfizer and the German company BioNTech — is hitting the scene as US deaths and cases soar.
The country notched more than 300,000 COVID-related deaths Monday, while more than 6 million Americans have tested positive for the virus to date.
Shortly after Lindsay received her shot, President Trump tweeted, “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
President-elect Joe Biden posted footage of the vaccine being administered, adding in the tweet, “Stay hopeful—brighter days lie ahead.’’
While some Americans have said they are wary of getting inoculated, given how fast-tracked the vaccine-approval process was, top health officials have said the shots are safe — and vital.
“This is the only pathway,’’ said Dr. Mark Jarrett, Northwell’s deputy chief medical officer, at Monday’s press conference.
The city was set to get a total of 72,000 doses in the first nationwide shipments of the vaccine — a figure that will balloon to 465,000 dosages in the next three weeks, New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said at a press conference Monday.
Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell, New York’s largest health system, said at the press conference that his medical conglomerate has received an initial “few thousand doses’’ and will soon be getting more “in batches.’’
He added that Northwell expects to have 54,000 of its workers inoculated by the end of January.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,’’ Jarrett told reporters.
Dowling noted that the shot’s shelf life, once taken out of refrigeration, is about six hours, so “the one thing we don’t want is to waste a single dose.’’
The medical chief said a needed follow-up second dose of the vaccine will be administered to workers 21 days after they receive their first shot.
The second person to receive the vaccine in New York after Lindsay was Dr. Yves Duroseau, the chairman of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
“I’ve gotten my flu shot, I’m not worried,” he told reporters at the press conference.
“Unfortunately, I have someone in my family who I’ve lost dearly, my dear uncle, [to the coronavirus], and I have someone right now currently in the hospital, so this continues,’’ the doctor added. “The way to stop this is through vaccination.”
Duroseau noted that as a minority, he is from a community particularly hard-hit by the virus.
“It is very important to not fear the vaccination, it’s based on science. This is what is going to save us,’’ he said.
-Additional reporting by Bernadette Hogan and Nolan Hicks