Trinitas Vaccinates 1000 Community Residents at Elizabeth High School With J&J

On March 8, 2020, Trinitas Regional Medical Center treated its first Covid patient.
On Monday, at Elizabeth High School, it vaccinated a thousand community residents with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
Chief Nursing Officer Mary McTigue said they took the initiative here to make sure vulnerable populations would be vaccinated.
“We reached out to senior housing, we reached out to houses of worship, and also to different social service agencies in our community,” she said, “in order to be able to help their people in particular access vaccination.”
McTigue said they also focused on reaching communities of color, where trust is an issue.
“We wanted to make sure that those individuals who are trusted within the Black and brown communities had the opportunity to talk to their constituents and encourage them to be vaccinated,” she said.
Over the last year, Trinitas has treated and discharged 13,000 Covid patients, and a year ago it was a very different scene, as the hospital treated that first patient with no idea of what was to come.
McTigue recalled what life at the hospital was like a year ago.
“The lack of PPE for our staff, and also worrying about the use of oxygen and what kinds of different types of medicines we might be able to use and the number of patients that were on ventilators,” she said, “the death and devastation.”