As Virginia prepares to vaccinate millions of people, hundreds of medical volunteers are stepping up to help. Sandy Hausman spoke with one nurse who signed up for ten four-hour shifts and said she would be happy to do more.
Tracy Kelly has been a nurse for 35 years and now heads the program for pediatric nurse-practitioners at UVA. She feels lucky the university sent students home for the holidays, leaving her time to vaccinate colleagues – medical professionals who are first in line for protection from COVID.
It’s normal for children to cry when they get their shots, but now – she says – it’s the grownups who are weeping.
“I’ve had lots of tears, but all of those tears are tears of joy. They’ve seen what’s been going on. They know the realities of the virus and what it’s done to the world.”
Many also want to remember this moment in history.
“So they might take pictures of the shot, of the vial, and sometimes they take videos of me giving the shot," she explains. "I remember one physician who said he was going to send a picture to his mother, because she had been worried about him since the pandemic started.”
And Kelly feels especially grateful after volunteering in at least a dozen third-world countries.
“Parents will wait hours to get their child vaccinated for diseases that they’ve seen kill their neighbors’ children," Kelly recalls. "They often walk long distances through difficult terrain to get to these clinics.”
UVA has set aside one of its clinics for COVID inoculation, staffed by ten nurses at a time, hoping to vaccinate 3,000 employees at the medical center by year’s end.
