City of El Paso says it’s run out of initial shipment of nearly 19,000 virus vaccines

EL PASO, Texas -- The city of El Paso has officially run out of Covid-19 vaccines as of Monday afternoon, according to Fire Chief Mario D'agostino, who also serves as the city's emergency management head.

The city will now have to wait until they receive the next shipment of vaccine, but there's no immediate word on when that will be.

So far, nearly 19,000 El Pasoans have received one dose of the vaccine, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. No one has been fully vaccinated yet with two doses.

As of Sunday, El Paso officials said they had administered less than half of the vaccine doses received. But a day later, they now said all the vaccines are gone.

It took three weeks to distribute the thousands of vaccines the city received, as state health officials urged vaccine providers to administer shots as soon as possible.

El Paso health department director Angela Mora said one of the reasons it took three weeks was due to a computer software glitch used to track the number of vaccine doses used.

Plus, she said the city and its vaccine providers are still relatively inexperienced when it comes to mass vaccination campaigns.

'The beginnings don't usually go that smoothly, and I think that's what we have experienced," Mora contended. "Maybe some of the agencies were not fully ready or maybe they thought they were ready, but they identified something that required more time for them to be fully ready, so i think that was a little bit expected."

Currently in El Paso, registration for coming vaccinations continues to available to front-line and emergency workers, people who are 65 and older, and people who are 16 and older with a chronic medical condition. You can visit EPstrong.org to sign up.

There are also 28 other vaccine providers in El Paso who receive their own dosage shipments.