Hartford — Hailing the beginning of the hoped-for end of the coronavirus pandemic, Hartford HealthCare administered some of the first Connecticut doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning, inoculating more than a dozen health care workers from around the state.

“This is the dawn of a new day. This is a time for hope. This is a historic moment,” Jeffrey Flaks, Hartford HealthCare’s president and chief executive officer, announced while standing at a podium set up beneath a tent on the Hartford Hospital campus.

A chilly drizzle failed to dampen the celebratory mood.

At 10:45 a.m., with Gov. Ned Lamont looking on, Keith Grant, Hartford HealthCare’s senior system director for infection prevention, removed his lab coat and took a seat at one end of a table where health care workers were preparing to administer the first vaccines, baring his right shoulder. Dr. Ajay Kumar, Hartford HealthCare’s chief clinical officer, sat down at the other end and offered his left shoulder.

Kumar got the first shot, Grant the second, and a series of Hartford HealthCare colleagues then got theirs — environmental and food services workers, respiratory therapists, physicians and nurses. A Backus Hospital nurse scheduled to be among them, Theresa LaLonde, was in attendance but didn’t get vaccinated because of a mix-up in timing. The last of the vaccines were administered at noon.

“I’ll get it, just not this week,” LaLonde, nurse manager of the COVID-19 unit at Backus, said later by phone. She and her mother had driven to Hartford from LaLonde’s home in Waterford Monday morning.

“I was absolutely doing it to show leadership,” LaLonde said.

On Monday, Backus was treating 35 COVID-19 patients, the most the hospital has had on any day since the pandemic began and a sign that the disease continues to surge in southeastern Connecticut. LaLonde said health care providers and caregivers of all stripes — any staff member who frequently goes into COVID-19 patients’ rooms — will begin receiving the first round of the vaccine this week and in subsequent weeks.

Front-line workers at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London also were expected to begin receiving vaccinations this week. The hospital reported Monday that after discharging five COVID-19 patients, it was treating 36 patients with the disease. Westerly Hospital had 19 COVID-19 patients.

All 55 members of LaLonde’s department were willing to get the vaccine, LaLonde said, though some wanted to wait until next week. Many of them have family members or friends who have had COVID, she said, adding, “Everybody’s just done with this thing.”

A team at Backus will administer the vaccine to staff members who’ve made appointments, LaLonde said. Recipients will take off from work the day after receiving the vaccine in the event of side effects that typically include headache and nausea and last less than 24 hours, according to LaLonde.

A second dose of the vaccine is administered 21 days after the first dose.

LaLonde, 38, said she’s been “very lucky.” Her husband and children — two sons, ages 9 and 11, and a 4-year-old daughter, all attending Waterford schools — have managed to stay COVID-free.

“My purpose in speaking is showing how confident I am in this vaccine,” LaLonde said. “I hope that others get it.”

Backus switchboard operators fielded numerous calls Monday from people inquiring about the vaccine and its availability, a Backus spokeswoman said.

Before receiving the vaccine Monday, Dr. Melisha Cumberland, Windham Hospital’s chief of medicine, said she had one word to describe her feeling: “Excitement.”

Flaks said it was almost impossible to imagine that the vaccine, which has a 95% rate of effectiveness, had been made available just nine months after Hartford Hospital admitted its first COVID-19 patient. He described working in health care as “a calling,” and said those who do are “a different breed.”

No one was more deserving of the first vaccines than the front-line health care workers, Lamont said.

“This is a really, really important day,” he said. “As President-elect Joe Biden might say, ‘This is a big deal.’

“We had some false starts early on in Washington when it came to taking COVID as seriously as we could, but we’re going on all cylinders right now ... from our amazing hospitals in Connecticut to Pfizer doing the R and D right down the street in Groton.”

Lamont called the Pfizer vaccine “one of the most effective vaccines in the history of the world.”

“I’m a bit of a football fan,” he said. “For the first time in a long time I think we see the end zone. We’ve got a lot more blocking and tackling to do. We’ve got a lot more wearing the mask to do, a lot more being careful to do, especially during the holiday season when people tend to gather and tend to let their guard down.”

b.hallenbeck@theday.com