EL PASO, Texas – El Paso was chosen by the state of Texas to be a megavaccination center and the community’s emergency management coordinator is calling the initial launch “successful”.
El Paso’s deputy fire chief, Jorge Rodriguez, who also serves as the county-town’s emergency management operations coordinator, briefed El Paso county commissioners about vaccination efforts at a meeting on Monday.
Rodriguez said 1,300 people were vaccinated on Sunday at a mega site in El Paso. He expects another 1,500 people to be vaccinated in the next few days.
To date, El Paso has received 55,000 vaccines, with 33,160 people receiving the first dose and 4,996 fully vaccinated. There are currently 82,000 people registered to receive the vaccine through epstrong.org.
The University Medical Center received 5,000 of the vaccines sent by the state, the city received the other 5,000.
The hospital has also been chosen as a megavaccination site and is currently working on a plan to implement these vaccines, said UMC spokesman Ryan Mielke. As ABC-7 reported on Sunday, the hospital opened the online registration for 5,000 vaccines and combined all of them with the containers within three hours, so the registration was closed
“We have already started vaccinating some of those 5,000 (people),” Mielke told ABC-7 via text message.
County judge Ricardo Samaniego said that UMC started its vaccination effort at the hospital, but will soon transfer it to the El Paso County Coliseum.
Commissioner David Stout, also from Task Force Covid-19 for the county, recommended opening four to five mega-sites to distribute vaccines more quickly. He suggested using Cares Act funding for this effort.
UTEP has also just been approved as a vaccine supplier and the president of the university appointed by Stout, Heather Wilson, is ready to help with vaccination, making UTEP a mega site.