SAN DIEGO — More than 300 firefighters and lifeguards received their first dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine Thursday. They are all trained as paramedics, which made them eligible to receive the inoculation as members of vaccination Tier 1A.
“We’re exposed to everything. We’re the first responders in that door sometimes not knowing what we’re going to be exposed to and we’re certainly seeing the surge. The whole county is seeing the surge, but our workforce is being significantly impacted right now,” said Chief Colin Stowell of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
Earlier this week, 120 San Diego firefighters were vaccinated by Sharp Healthcare after workers realized it had hundreds of vaccine doses that were due to expire before they could be administered to healthcare staff. All the city’s firefighters are considered EMTs and can be vaccinated in Tier 1A.
Controversially, Sharp also vaccinated 186 San Diego police officers, who are members of Tier 1B during the same vaccination effort. California has not yet begun to vaccinate members of Tier 1B.
During Thursday’s vaccine initiative, the recipients were Tier 1A-eligible from the six fire departments that comprise the Metro Zone Emergency Command & Data Center. Vaccinations will continue over the next few days for members of departments in San Diego, Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach, Coronado and Poway.
To help meet the demand, the vaccines were administered by EMTs who received training from the county on how to properly handle, track and give the shot, which requires storage in ultra-cold freezers until they’re ready for use.
“We’re expecting to vaccinate over 1,000 people in the next few days. There’s no way the county public health nurses would have been able to handle that volume,” said Stowell. “Now that we have that training we can not only provide it to other first responders here in the county but the next tiers, certainly our law enforcement, all of the police departments within our agencies, and then city employees and moving out into the facilities in the rest of the community.”