SALEM — The first shipments of the long-awaited coronavirus vaccine have arrived in Oregon, although officials don’t expect to begin inoculating any residents on Monday, Dec. 14.

The shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were expected to arrive at 10:30 a.m. Dec. 14, but instead arrived by about 7 a.m., according to the Oregon Health Authority. A Legacy Health facility in Northeast Portland and Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center in Tualatin received the first two, 975-dose shipments.

It’s not immediately clear when the first vaccinations will begin, although an agency spokesperson suggested it may be Wednesday, Dec. 16.

Frontline health care workers will be the first to start receiving the vaccine, followed by residents of nursing homes beginning next week. They will need a second dose three weeks later in order for the vaccine to offer its full protection. The vaccine is estimated to be about 95% effective.

“In recent weeks, as COVID-19 vaccines reached the final stages of approval, I have said time and again that hope is on the way. Today, I can tell you that help is here,” said Gov. Kate Brown, in a news release. “The first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Oregon, the first of many that will be distributed across the state.”

“We are in the middle of some of the hardest days of this pandemic,” Brown continued. “Our hospitals are stretched to capacity, and too many families are losing loved ones just as we enter the holiday season. So many Oregonians have suffered and sacrificed in the last 10 months. But starting this week, and each week following — as vaccines become more widely available — we will begin gaining ground again in our fight against this disease.”

Legacy, the first health care group to receive the vaccine, said it had not yet determined when it would start vaccinating people against COVID-19. Legacy has two freezers on hand and expects two additional storage units to arrive Tuesday, Dec. 15.

Among other hospitals that will soon receive shipments: Kaiser Permanente, which has two hospitals in the Portland area, will receive 975 doses Dec. 15 and plans to begin vaccinations Friday, Dec. 18, at its Sunnyside and Westside Medical Center. The health care organization has a freezer in Washington and Oregon to store the vaccines.

Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Ontario, along the Oregon-Idaho border, also will receive 975 dose shipments on Dec. 15.

In all, Oregon is expected to receive 35,100 doses this week. More than 24,375 of those doses are going to hospitals and health care systems. The other 10,725 doses will go to nursing homes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked Oregon to choose the first sites to receive the vaccine, and the system of distribution is being monitored, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

Across the country on Dec. 14, health care workers began receiving immunizations. Among them, a critical care nurse in New York and workers at a medical center in Ohio.

On Dec. 13, a scientific review panel for Oregon, California, Washington and Nevada reviewed the data on the Pfizer vaccine and determined it was “safe and efficacious.”

Last week, a U.S. panel of scientists reviewed trial data and gave the vaccine its stamp of approval. The federal Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11 granted the vaccine an emergency use authorization for people ages 16 and older. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, said Dec. 13 he recommends the vaccine.

By the end of December, Oregon could receive between a total of 197,500 and 228,400 doses of both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, according to the Oregon Health Authority and the governor’s office.

Brown said the state will “work to ensure” groups disproportionately effected by COVID-19 — including Black, Latino and tribal communities — will have “equitable access to vaccination.”

There are more than 4.2 million residents statewide — and estimates of when everyone who wants a vaccine gets one range from summer to fall. It’s unknown precisely when children younger than 16 will get the OK to be inoculated. Scientists say more study is needed before giving the vaccine to younger children.

After health care workers and residents of long-term care facility, essential workers will be next in line to get inoculated. But the state has yet to decide who will be defined as an essential worker and what order those workers will be vaccinated in within that group.

After that, people with underlying conditions that put them at high risk of severe complications from COVID-19 and people older than 65 will be given vaccinations.

It will likely be sometime in the spring before the general population’s turn in line comes up.

Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority, urged Oregonians to continue to wear masks, avoid gatherings and take other public health safety precautions because vaccinations are still months away for most Oregonians.

“The vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel, but we will be in this tunnel for several months,” he said in a news release. “We need to keep doing what we’ve been doing to help our friends, neighbors and ourselves stay safe.”

This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.