Five years later, first Chicago doctor to receive COVID vaccine shares biggest lessons

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Marina Del Rios worked mostly night shifts at University of Illinois Hospital.

As an ER physician, she's used to stress and difficult cases. But a global health emergency brought a new level of unknown to Chicago, especially before a widely available vaccine.

"It was a lot of uncertainty. A lot of fear," Del Rios said. "Not only for our patients but also for ourselves."

On Dec. 15, 2020, Del Rios was the very first in a group of frontline workers to publicly roll up her sleeve at a West Side hospital. On camera, she received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19.

"For me, it was really important that my community understood that this was safe," she said.

Chicago's death rate from COVID for the Hispanic and Latino population was 89.3 per 100,000 in 2021, as vaccine eligibly and access was just starting to expand. It ranked below the city's Black population, which had a death rate of 101.4 per 100,000 but trailed behind every other racial group according to data from the city's public health department.

With a large number of Latinos in Chicago working service and gig jobs, Dr. Del Rios noticed an increased risk of exposure to the virus. As a Latina herself, she felt a responsibility to lead by example.

"I felt it was important people saw one of them getting vaccinated," Del Rios said. "Not everyone can get convinced. But you might get someone convinced. And one person you get to get vaccinated is worth the time."

It was about a year after her initial dose that Dr. Del Rios met a server at the airport. He asked if she was "that doctor who got the COVID shot on TV."

Del Rios was prepared for backlash. Instead, he thanked her.

"... And he goes, 'thank you so much; because of you I spoke with my family and we've all gotten vaccinated and we haven't gotten COVID.' And for me that was just so heartwarming," she recalled.

In 2021, 63 percent of Chicago's Latinos were fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That jumped to almost 72 percent the following year, just barely surpassing the vaccination rate of the city's total population.

We asked Dr. Del Rios, five years after getting that shot, what lessons she thinks we've learned from the virus and its impact on people.

"For those of us in the healthcare field, we're now aware of how powerful social media can be," she told us.

A big part of her job became battling vaccine disinformation and addressing vaccine hesitancy.

"You have to start from a place of understanding and compassion," she said. That's the approach she always uses with patients, whether discussing vaccines for COVID-19 or another illness.

Another lesson Del Rios believes we learned was the importance of knowledge-sharing on a large scale.

"It's important to be part of a global community that is constantly communicating about these infectious diseases," Del Rios said, noting that another global health emergency could happen and we need to be prepared.

Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, or WHO, which during the pandemic shared data and resources to fight COVID.

"Without support for ongoing research to find new vaccines, to address misinformation, to identify the sources of inequities, that's going to affect us all," Del Rios told NBC 5.