On Monday, the first doses of Moderna’s newly approved COVID-19 vaccine arrived at medical centers around the U.S. One of the very first to receive the Moderna vaccine was 44-year-old Arlene Ramirez, a nurse from Queens, New York, who became ill with COVID-19 in March and lost her father to the disease.

Arlene Ramirez: “As a healthcare worker, seeing what we saw — people clinging on to life, death after death — having endured all at the same time — illness of my father-in-law, being severely ill myself, 36 days of my father being in the intensive care unit here — this vaccine is hope. It’s hope that we will cease this pandemic. It’s hope that we will live a better life.”

President-elect Joe Biden received an injection of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in a televised event Monday, urging Americans to line up for their shots when the vaccine becomes available to them.

Meanwhile, the Vatican has told Catholics around the world it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that were developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses.