No word yet on when El Paso will receive new Johnson & Johnson 1-dose vaccine
EL PASO, Texas -- Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration issued emergency use authorization for the new Johnson and Johnson one-dose coronavirus vaccine.
Distribution for millions of initial J&J vaccine doses began nationwide Monday. But El Paso city and county officials told ABC-7 they have not yet received any information about when they will receive a shipment.
On Friday during a virus briefing, local officials announced they have a plan in place for when they do receive the J&J vaccine.
"We will be able to use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine primarily for people that are hard to reach," said El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego. "If you reach the homeless or someone in jail, you might not see them again, but if you can give them that one dose then you're going to be covering a whole lot of ground."
Samaniego said the county would be using Desert Imaging vans to access those who are home-bound or part of hard-to-reach populations.
The county is partnering with Desert Imaging to get the vaccine to those popluations.
Desert Imaging has three mobile mammogram trailers not in use. Those will be used to store the vaccine and take them to the vulnerable populations.
"Instead of having them come out to one of the centralized locations the plan really is to go out to them," said President of Desert Imaging Raul Arizpe.
In addition to storing the vaccines, the trailers will also be used for all the prep work.
"They're going to do any mixing, they're going to load the injections here and team will go out and actually do the physical injections outside," said Arizpe.
