The glass vial used in the first American COVID-19 vaccination was obtained from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The museum also acquired related items, including the scrubbing and vaccination card of Sandra Lindsay, director of critical care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, who on December 14, 2020, became the first person in the U.S. to receive a COVID-19 vaccine received. .
“The urgent need for effective vaccines in the US has been met with unprecedented speed,” Anthea M. Hartig, director of the museum’s Elizabeth MacMillan, said in a statement on Tuesday. “These now historic artifacts not only document this remarkable scientific advancement, but also represent the hope that millions of people offer by the tantalizing crises brought on by COVID-19.”
The announcement Tuesday comes days before the World Health Organization’s anniversary commemorating the outbreak of a pandemic. Since April 2020, a special task force at the museum has been searching for objects and documentation related to COVID-19.
“We’ve had everything from presentations of masks people have made to objects related to the treatment of Covid, to practitioners presenting our objects related to the way they have protected themselves or their family,” Alexandra Lord, chair of the museum’s department of medicine and science, tells Smithsonian Magazine.
The vial and other items are in line with the museum’s collection of material related to historical epidemics and pandemics, including objects related to the polio epidemic, the 1957 flu pandemic and the HIV / Aids pandemic. Many items from the collection will be on display in a 2022 exhibition, “In Sickness and in Health”.