Local facilities welcome arrival of Covid-19 vaccine

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    SHREVEPORT, LA (KTBS) — As Americans wait to roll up their sleeves and take the coronavirus vaccine, millions of doses are en route to hospitals across the nation Monday. Some batches have arrived in Shreveport. The first shipment of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine left Michigan to FedEx and UPS hubs in Louisville and Memphis over the weekend. Overnight crews loaded the vaccine onto planes to be dispatched across the county.

KTBS 3 did some flight research and learned that two planes, one from FedEx and another from UPS, arrived in Shreveport Sunday night and are currently on the ground at Shreveport Regional Airport.

Both Willis Knighton Health and Ochsner have told KTBS 3 that they will get the vaccines Monday morning. WK confirms its shipment. It’s getting 975 in the first shipment from Pfizer. The supply will be divided among the system’s locations.

“It is not the end of the pandemic, but it is the beginning of the end,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said.

According to his office, Louisiana will get around 79,000 doses within the next two weeks. The first doses will go to the state’s 130,000 front-line medical workers. The state will also get just over 110,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine for staff and residents and nursing homes and long term care facilities.

As COVID-19 vaccines roll out, Louisiana laid out a tentative plan for who will get them first.

Phase 1-A will be hospital workers with direct COVID-19 exposure and care as well as people living and working at nursing homes.

Phase 1-B includes most other health care and home care workers along with first responders. This phase also includes public transit workers, pharmacists, food processors, packing personnel and people 65 or older with pre-existing conditions.

Phase 2 is for K-12 school and daycare employees, grocers and food distributors, utility workers, government workers, military personnel and postal workers. It also includes adults ages 18 – 64 with existing health conditions and incarcerated adults.

Phase 3 opens vaccine access to the general public.

The state says this plan is subject to change.

According to the Texas Department of Health nearly a quarter of a million doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be available. The vaccine will be at 109 hospitals in 34 counties.

Wadley Regional Medical Center and CHRISTUS Saint Michael Medical Center in Texarkana will both get 975 doses this week, while CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview and Longview Medical Center will also both get 975 doses.

Governor Greg Abbott says Texas will get a total of 1.4 million doses this month.

The head of the U.S.’s coronavirus vaccine efforts says 14 million vaccine doses will be distributed by the end of the year, followed by 50 to 80 million doses in January and in February.

More than 600 facilities across the U.S. will get the vaccines in the coming days.

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