North Dakota and New Orleans have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus.

On today’s episode, we speak to health care workers in both places as they become some of the first to receive and administer the vaccine, and tap into the mood of hope and excitement tempered by a bleak fact: The battle against Covid-19 is not yet over.




Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times.




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Background reading:

• Monday’s vaccinations, the first in a staggeringly complicated national campaign, were a moment infused with hope and pain for hundreds of America’s health care workers.
• Some of the very medical centers that have endured the worst of the coronavirus found the gloom that has long filled their corridors replaced by elation. The vaccine campaign, however, began on the same day that America surpassed 300,000 deaths from Covid-19.