Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine has come to Virginia, with Richmond and Henrico officials marking the arrival with a news conference Wednesday morning following the first vaccinations.

Shirley Bakka, a public health nurse with the Henrico County Health District who specializes in immunizations, was one of the first to receive the Moderna vaccine dose. She had no trepidation in receiving the vaccine. In fact, state health officials sent out a photograph published in 1962 of Ms. Bakka as a 2-year-old in Minnesota receiving the polio vaccine sugar cube.

While she recalled the oral polio vaccine “tasted good” when she was a toddler, her reaction to the Moderna injection was more rooted in the promise it holds for the future.

“It feels good because it does give us hope this vaccine will help us end the pandemic,” Ms. Bakka said. “I encourage everyone to receive the COVID-19 vaccine when you can.”

Tracey Avery-Geter, a nurse practitioner supervisor with the Richmond City Health District who administers COVID-19 tests at the health department’s community testing events, also took the Moderna vaccine yesterday.

She encouraged people to take advantage of the health department’s free weekly COVID- 19 testing events and to heed safety guidelines. She called the COVID-19 vaccine a “great opportunity.”

“There will be a time for everyone” to take the vaccine, Ms. Avery-Geter said. “We still have a hard road ahead, but we’re moving forward.”

Currently, Virginia is in Phase 1a of its plan prioritizing who will get the COVID-19 vaccine. Those with top priority are health care workers and residents and employees of long-term care facilities. CVS and Walgreens announced Monday that they’ve begun administering vaccines to people in assisted living facilities in accord with an agreement with federal officials.

Virginia’s priority plan is based on recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which calls for front line essential workers, including teachers, and those age 65 and older and those with underlying medical conditions to be vaccinated next.

Younger people and the general public would be in the largest group to receive the vaccine perhaps in the spring or summer.

So far, it has been smooth sailing for those who have received the Moderna vaccine or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that was delivered to hospitals across the nation last week, including in Richmond. Both vaccines require a second shot three weeks later to be fully effective. The side effects that have been reported — temporary fevers, aches and sore muscles — are being explained by medical officials as expected, yet subsiding within a few days based on experience from clinical trials.

The first supply of the Moderna vaccine arrived in Virginia on Tuesday, according to the Virginia Department of Health, following an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. M. Norman Oliver, Virginia’s health commissioner, said the state plans to distribute the initial 140,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine to 96 health care systems around the state. Virginia also was allocated about 50,000 more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that were to be delivered this week.

“This arrival simultaneously gave our staff an enormous sense of hope and responsibility,” said Dr. Melissa Viray, deputy director of the Richmond and Henrico health districts, noted the impact the coronavirus has had on the region’s elderly and its African-American and Latino communities.

“We mourn those hardships our communities have experienced and we celebrate the hope that lies ahead.”

Last Friday, the Virginia Department of Health reported that the state’s expected shipment of vaccine in December had been cut from a total of 480,000 doses to 370,650. Dr. Oliver said the reduction is a consequence of the production of the vaccine and not something unique to Virginia. Other states are handling similar reductions, he said.

While Dr. Oliver said he expects “ups and downs” in the manufacturing level of the vaccine, he remained confident that there will be “sufficient vaccine over the course of this vaccination campaign” for all.