By Gabriella Payne
Residents at the Millhaven Lodge in Pakenham are now one step closer to being safely protected from Covid-19, after receiving their first jab of the highly anticipated Pfizer vaccine this afternoon.
Although the vaccine delivery was running a few hours late, residents and staff were pleased to see the arrival of the valuable doses at about 12.30pm on Tuesday 23 March and everyone quickly got to work administering the jabs to elderly residents.
Betty Morrison, a 98-year-old resident at Millhaven Lodge said that it “didn’t hurt much” when she received her dose, and that it was just “more of a little prick in the arm”.
“Apparently I’ve got to wait 15 minutes now,” Ms Morrison said.
Linda Austen, the CEO of Millhaven Lodge said that Ms Morrison and the other 109 residents who were set to be vaccinated by the end of the day were being monitored by nurses for 15 minutes in the vaccination room, and would then be monitored over the next 24 hours in their own rooms.
Ms Austen said that she was glad the vaccinations had finally made it, as the initial delivery time had been estimated at 9am and they had been left waiting for quite a while.
“At least they’ve come – because the residents were here at seven o’clock this morning, waiting and getting ready,” Ms Austen said.
“So they waited all the time until 12.30pm and then bang, bang, bang – we started at about one o’clock and we’ve gotten through about four fifths of residents already,” she said, just after 2pm.
Ms Austen said that she believed Millhaven Lodge might be one of the first places in Pakenham to begin vaccinating residents as part of phase 1b of the Federal Government’s vaccination roll out.
“I just think it’s good, it just takes the pressure off us with the more [vaccinations] that are done,” she said.
“I think they’re pretty happy to get it. We just wish we could get all our doses as well, as we’d just like to hurry the roll out to all the rest of the staff and volunteers.”
Ms Austen said that very few families and residents had protested getting vaccinated and overall they had managed to administer jabs to about 85 percent of residents in their care.
While most residents were happy about getting the Pfizer vaccine, some questioned whether it was going to do much in the long run.
“I’m so close to heaven, it doesn’t really matter to me,” Ms Morrison said.
