SEATTLE – After blessing the new Swedish Community COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic at Seattle University, Archbishop Paul D. Etienne joined hundreds of clinic volunteers in receiving the COVID-19 vaccination January 16.

“I’m grateful that we as a world community are at this stage where the vaccination is available,” Archbishop Etienne said. “It has been a difficult year for all, and this is a moment of great hope. I encourage everyone to participate in this vaccination process, not just for personal health reasons, but out of care and concern for the good of others.” (Pope Francis and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI have also received their first doses of the vaccine.) 

Archbishop Etienne began the morning by leading a blessing, said Dougal Hewitt, executive vice president and chief mission officer for Providence St. Joseph Health (Swedish is affiliated with Providence).

The archbishop expressed gratitude to “the many health care workers, from nurses to doctors, housekeeping staff to CEOs. You have generously served the sick for many long hours over this past year. Your dedication and selflessness is an inspiration,” Archbishop Etienne said. “May the Lord continue to sustain you, give you hope and bless the work of your hands.”

The archbishop’s blessing had an emotional impact on some of the hundreds of clinic volunteers present, Hewitt said.

“They were incredibly moved, and some of them began to fill up with tears,” he said, noting the amount of pressure and stress on people since the pandemic began nearly a year ago. In fact, on January 19, 2020, Providence cared for the state’s first identified COVID-19 patient at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Hewitt said.

“Folks have been carrying that stress and that fear for so long,” Hewitt said. “It was really a moment of solace and refreshment for the archbishop to bless the gathering.”

Collaboration of Swedish, Seattle U

The new clinic went from vision to reality in just two weeks, according to a news release from Seattle University.

Swedish is operating and managing the clinic, while Seattle University is hosting the location and parking. Both organizations, which are longtime partners in health care education, are involved in promoting and obtaining non-medical volunteers to help staff the clinic, according to the news release.

Already, the clinic has over 500 volunteers and is not currently seeking more, Hewitt said.

“We are glad to step up to this opportunity to put our mission as a university into practice and to exercise needed leadership to meet an urgent societal need,” Jesuit Father Stephen V. Sundborg, the university’s president, said in the release.

The partnership will allow Seattle University’s nursing faculty and student nurses to administer vaccinations, which are being allocated according to guidance from the state health department and the federal Centers for Disease Control, according to the release.

“This clinic will help us reach our goal to vaccinate thousands of workers in Phase 1a that aren’t affiliated with a large health system,” said Doctor R. Guy Hudson, CEO of Swedish. “We’re grateful to our partners at Seattle University who have helped get it set up so we can continue to serve the community.”

According to the state health department, “Phase 1a focuses on high-risk workers in health care settings and high-risk first responders in order to protect the state’s medical care response capacity, [along with] residents and staff of nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other community-based, congregate living settings where most individuals over 65 years of age are receiving care, supervision or assistance aiming to avoid hospitalizations, severe morbidity and mortality,” the release sai.d

‘Encouragement to others’

Receiving the vaccination, Archbishop Etienne said, was “a concrete demonstration of my own support and encouragement to others to participate in this vaccination process as a means to finally gaining the upper hand on this virus.”

Hewitt said Providence wanted the archbishop to be vaccinated because “we think of Archbishop Etienne as an essential worker. He himself is a caregiver at risk when he visits the sick. He needs to be vaccinated.”

Other priests in the archdiocese have also received COVID-19 vaccinations from health care systems that have identified them as essential workers because of their in-person outreach to the sick.

“May all of us continue to respond with generous acts of care and concern for our neighbors in the days ahead as we begin to see the ‘Exit’ sign for this pandemic,” Archbishop Etienne said. “Let’s continue to practice all of the important health practices and do our part to defeat this COVID-19 virus for good.”