LSU Health Gives First COVID Vaccinations on Campus in January
Leslie Capo, Director of Information Services
LSU Health New Orleans began vaccinating its faculty, staff and students on January 13, 2021. Media were invited to capture the first doses of vaccine as they were being given at LSU Health New Orleans during the vaccination program run-through. The event took place on the first floor of 2020 Gravier Street. Masks and physical distancing were required.
As an essential health care university, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) has designated LSU Health New Orleans as a Healthcare Closed Point of Dispensing (POD) for the COVID vaccine. Healthcare Closed PODs dispense medical countermeasures only to their own populations while continuing operations during a public health emergency. This means that LSU Health New Orleans faculty, staff and students who have played vital roles in pandemic response through patient care, COVID research, clinical trials, and COVID testing in vulnerable communities throughout New Orleans, are eligible to be vaccinated. Unlike other universities, LSU Health New Orleans has remained open throughout this public health crisis carrying out its critically important mission and making enormous contributions to the city's and state's response.
Dr. Rebekah Gee, LSU Healthcare Services Division CEO, is leading the LSU Health New Orleans vaccination program, and has secured supplies of the Pfizer COVID vaccine, the first of which arrived on January 12, 2021. The vaccination program is being administered by the LSU Healthcare Network and LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing.
LSU Health New Orleans faculty and students are also supporting vaccination efforts in other health care facilities.
With six health professional schools - Medicine, the State's only School of Nursing within an Academic Health Sciences Center, Louisiana's only School of Dentistry, the State's only public School of Public Health, the School of Allied Health Professions, and the School of Graduate Studies -- LSU Health New Orleans is Louisiana's most comprehensive health sciences university. It educates the majority of health care professionals practicing in the state.