Health Department Receives 5,000 Additional Vaccine Doses

After a busy week which saw the Department of Public Health run through its allotted 5,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, they announced that they’ve already received another shipment of 5,000.

This means that those people who are frontline medical workers, first responders, aged 65 years or older, and those with a chronic health condition that have already signed up to receive the vaccine should regularly check their e-mail and answer the phone in case they are called for this round of vaccine distribution.

Health Department staff will keep up their furious pace and are expected to vaccinate 1,000 people a day beginning on Friday. As it is, they’ve already managed to vaccinate about 10,000 people in about a week.

During today’s press conference, County Judge Samaniego was cautiously optimistic regarding the prevention measures El Pasoans have taken by noting that the COVID-19 hospitalization rate has dipped below 20% but urged that people in the area continue to take measures to ensure their health.

As of the time of today’s press conference, almost 43,000 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and over 6,000 have been fully vaccinated.

Judge Samaniego and Mayor Leeser did provide a reminder that this mass campaign is by appointment only and also asked that people be prompt for their appointment but not arrive too early as this will also cause a backlog to the process and lead to more people congregating in close proximity which is not good for social distancing purposes.

There’s still a ways to go, but local health officials are working hard and working together in order to make this happen. They’ll keep working and are even discussing the possibility of adding more mass vaccine distribution sites.

The current goal is to vaccinate everybody within the next 6 months.