Live on-air jab aimed to inspire confidence in the public to get the vaccine.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s celebrity chief medical correspondent for CNN received the coronavirus vaccine live on-air on Friday morning to inspire confidence in the public to get the vaccine.
Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, sat before cameras at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta to get his first dose of the vaccine on CNN’s “New Day” morning show.
“I really feel good about today,” Gupta said as a doctor prepped him for the shot. “You know it really does strike me that it’s such an amazing scientific feat, and yet it’s such a mundane act.”
After receiving the shot Gupta thanked the doctor. “Do you get thanked a lot for jabbing somebody?” he said with a laugh.
Both Gupta and his medical colleague Valerie Montgomery Rice, who received a shot alongside him, will have to return to get their second doses of the vaccine within the next few weeks.
In addition to his work for CNN, Gupta is an associate professor of neurosurgery at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
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Son of immigrants from India, Gupta had been considered for the position of Surgeon General by President-elect Barack Obama but he withdrew citing his family and his career.
Gupta has been named one of PEOPLE magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive,” a “pop culture icon” by USA Today and one of the “Ten Most Influential Celebrities” by Forbes Magazine.
Gupta’s vaccination came about an hour before Vice President Pence publicly received his own vaccine becoming the highest-ranking elected official in the US to be inoculated against covid-19 .
Pence, his wife Karen Pence and Surgeon General Jerome Adams were all administered the vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer during a televised ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
The Pences and Adams were attended to by staff from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and their joint appearance was billed as an effort to shore up public confidence in the vaccination process.
The vaccinations were carried live across multiple television networks.
“We gather here today at the end of a historic week to affirm to the American people that hope is on the way,” Pence said in remarks following his shot.
President Donald Trump himself still has not been vaccinated, tweeting over the weekend that he would do so “at the appropriate time” and that top White House staffers should receive the shot “somewhat later in the program.”