With the coronavirus vaccine arriving in Illinois for the first time this week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says that he will not be receiving the treatment right away, saying he will wait for the time his “turn comes up.”
During his daily coronavirus press briefing on Monday, Pritzker says that he wants healthcare workers and workers and residents in long-term care facilities to get the treatment before he receives the injection, emphasizing their importance in the vaccination process.
“(I’ll get the vaccine) whenever I’m assigned a place in line,” he said. “We still have a lot of healthcare workers, and a lot of long-term care facilities that need to be covered, including the people who work at those facilities as well as the residents.”
Pritzker says the state is still working in close conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before determining which state residents and workers will be eligible to receive the vaccine after healthcare workers and long-term care workers receive the treatment, and said that those determinations will help decide when he will “get in line” to receive the vaccine.
Pritzker was on hand Monday as the first shipments of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Illinois, saying that he felt that the arrival of the treatments was “history in the making.”
“I was so excited getting up this morning,” he said. “The people who were there, the troopers, the logistics managers, the folks who are packing and unpacking the boxes, they all recognize as I do that this is history in the making.”
