Alexandria City Public Schools teacher Danielle Thorne was back in her school building on Tuesday for the first time since she packed up her classroom last June. But she wasn’t there to teach a class, as schools in Alexandria haven’t yet reopened—she was there to get vaccinated for the coronavirus.

Thorne said she felt getting the shot was part of her responsibility to her school and her neighbors.

“Especially as a teacher, you’re part of a community,” Thorne said. “That’s a big part of the profession…trying to do my part is definitely important to me.”

Thorne, who grew up in Alexandria and now teaches geometry to local high school students, sat at a table in the school cafeteria with a nurse, who vaccinated her. She said she couldn’t wait to tell her students about the experience tomorrow.

“This is kind of a full circle, having it all happen here,” she said.

Alexandria and other Northern Virginia jurisdictions — including Arlington, Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties — moved into Phase 1b of the commonwealth’s vaccine distribution plan on Monday. Under Phase 1b, the list of people eligible to receive a dose of the vaccine expands to include first responders, educators, people held in correctional facilities, grocery store and public transit workers, mail carriers, and select government workers. All people over the age of 75 are also on the list.

Thorne was vaccinated alongside her boss, Alexandria schools superintendent Gregory Hutchings. The two finished up before hundreds of teachers and other essential workers started coming into the school cafeteria for their own first doses. Public health officials expect to vaccinate as many as 800 people at the site on Tuesday.

Hutchings told reporters that schools are planning to begin the transition back to in-person learning starting on January 26, which is before Thorne and other teachers getting vaccinated this week will be scheduled for their second doses. Teachers unions in Virginia have called for schools to remain virtual until all staff are fully vaccinated. (Officials said the plan could still change, depending on public health data).

Hutchings said the schools will take other precautions against coronavirus spread, too, including ordering protective equipment for staff and ensuring social distancing and mask-wearing as much as possible.

Alexandria public health director Stephen Haering said his team is working closely with the schools to make sure their public health interventions are in place in advance of some students’ return to classes.

“We’re emphasizing: control what you can. So you can control the continuous and correct use of masks, the physical distancing, the hand sanitization, the sanitization of the commonly touch surfaces, and the collaboration with the health department. And they’ve been top notch with all of that,” he said.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, who looked on as Hutchings and Thorn got their shots, told reporters the vaccine rollout represented an important moment in the commonwealth’s fight against the coronavirus, which is now in its tenth month. Vaccine distribution so far has lagged behind where some officials expected it to be, and Northam said he hoped allowing parts of the state like Alexandria to move at their own pace would help speed up the process. 

“We really need to ramp things up. We need to get more shots in people’s arms,” he said. “So we’re really stressing flexibility.”

Northam said he hopes to get vaccinations up to 50,000 per day across the state. At that rate, his administration calculates that all Virginians could be vaccinated by early or mid summer, with the goal of a return to normalcy for students in the next school year. (Virginia distributed slightly less than a tenth of that target — 4,066 doses — on Monday.)

The vaccine will not be required for staff as a requirement for coming back to work, but Hutchings strongly encouraged teachers to sign up for an appointment to receive the shot.

“Everybody doesn’t like needles… I don’t like needles. But I think that this is something that we really just have to have to do,” he said.

Haering said he’d seen a degree of initial vaccine hesitancy during the rollout so far, but found that many returned to ask for a dose after a short time.

“There are a number of people that are waiting to get the vaccine because they want to see,” he said. “And what we’re doing is we’re saying, ‘OK, that’s fine,’ because first of all, we can’t accommodate everybody on the first day. But then when they’re interested, we find them showing up.”

Even with more vaccinations on the horizon in Alexandria and across the region, the pandemic picture is still grim. The city is experiencing some of the worst days of the pandemic so far, adding an average of nearly 100 new cases every day. Deaths, too, are up, according to Haering. Four Alexandrians have already died this month from COVID-19, and 10 lost their lives in December.

Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, who also spoke to reporters at the vaccination distribution center, urged his fellow residents to hold on and wait for the vaccine.

“Anyone who’s run a marathon knows when you get to about mile 21, 22, things start falling apart,” said Wilson, who is known for inviting his constituents to go running with him. “But, you know, the finish line is very close. You can see it, you can smell it. You know it’s there and we’re almost there. We’re almost the finish line. We just need a little bit more.”