
Salem Hospital is not among the first Oregon facilities to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Vaccine doses arrived in Oregon over the weekend, the Oregon Health Authority said in a news release Monday.
Legacy Health was the first health provider to get the vaccine, made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. The health system’s Holladay Park site in Portland and Meridian Park site in Tualatin each received one package of 975 doses Monday morning.
Three other Oregon locations will receive 975-dose packages on Tuesday: Oregon Health & Science University Pharmacy in Portland, Kaiser Permanente’s Airport Way Center in Portland, and St. Alphonsus Medical Center in Ontario, near the Idaho border.
Most Oregon hospitals that registered as vaccine provider sites are expected to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine over the next two weeks, OHA said.
Salem Hospital has been approved as a vaccine provider site. Officials there expect to get vaccines sometime this week, but have not been provided a specific date, hospital spokesman Michael Gay said. They expect to get the standard 975-dose shipment.
The hospital is prepared to begin giving vaccinations the day the doses arrive, Gay said. They will go first to workers who are at high risk of coming into contact with COVID-19 positive patients.
Salem Hospital currently has the fifth-largest COVID-19 workplace outbreak in the state, with 100 cases since May 27. It consistently has had more COVID-19 patients than other hospitals in the state.