SAN ANTONIO – A day following a monumental delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine, UT Health San Antonio will begin to administer the drug to frontline healthcare workers.
Doctors, nurses and care team workers in San Antonio will roll up their sleeves and receive their first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine starting on Tuesday. The hospital will vaccinate its workers during a live event from 1-3 p.m. on Tuesday.
The Pfizer COVID-19 regimen includes a second dose administered in three weeks. Workers at UT Health San Antonio will receive their second dose over several days in January, according to UT Health.
UT Health San Antonio received nearly 6,000 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on Monday amid a nationwide rollout of the drug to defeat the virus that has caused 300,000 U.S. deaths.
Doses of the vaccine were also sent to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Methodist Dallas Medical Center and UT Health Austin’s Dell Medical School on Monday.
A total of 19,500 doses of the vaccine were sent to the four Texas sites on Monday, according to the Associated Press.
The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was also administered at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Brooke Army Medical Center and the Air Force 59th Medical Wing were among the first 145 sites to receive shipments of the vaccine. The first shot was given on Monday to Maj. Andrew Gausepohl, an Air Force doctor.
On Tuesday, hospitals in other major Texas cities were expected to receive another 75,000 doses.
By the end of the week, a total of 28,725 doses of the vaccine are expected to be delivered to Bexar County hospitals, according to Michelle Vigil, a spokesperson for San Antonio Metro Health.
Those locations include the San Antonio State Hospital, North Central Baptist Hospital, St. Luke’s Baptist Hosptial, Christus Santa Rosa Medical Center, Christus Santa Rosa Hospital - Westover Hills, Methodist Hospital and Methodist Children’s Hospital, Methodist Metropolitan Hospital, Northeast Baptist Hospital, Wellness 360 and Baptist Medical Center.
The vaccine comes on the heels of 24,400 virus-related deaths in Texas, second only to New York in the overall death count, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins. One in every 332 people in Texas tested positive for the virus within the past week.
On Monday, Texas health officials reported 8,771 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 26 more deaths. San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg reported 599 new COVID-19 cases in Bexar County on Monday.
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