El Paso to get 1st shipment of Johnson & Johnson doses amid registration update
EL PASO, Texas -- More El Pasoans are set to be vaccinated this upcoming week with Texas being allotted more than one million first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
While we still don't know how many doses El Paso is expected to get, but County Judge Riccardo Samaniego is excited about the possibility of this next distribution.
"We know that the solution to a lot of our ills right now with the virus has to do with getting vaccinated,” Samaniego said. “This is probably one of the most important things that we could possibly do, make sure that every individual in our community that wants to get the vaccine, gets that vaccine."
A large allotment of these new doses will be the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The single-dose vaccine was authorized last weekend by the FDA and began shipping this week.
"We're trying to use it on individuals that might not be able to come back, somewhere that's not mobile,” Samaniego said.
The judge told ABC-7 that many El Pasoans have told him they'd prefer to have just the one J & J shot, but for the time being nobody will get to choose which of the three vaccines they receive.
"Once we get better at it, we might have an opportunity for individuals to,” Samaniego said. “What we're saying now, which one should you get? The one that's closest to your arm."
The city and county of El Paso are scheduled to hold a press conference Monday at noon to provide more information on their joint registration system, as they're in the process of formulating a dashboard to help keep El Pasoans informed with all the latest information.
"We're hoping by the end of this coming Friday we will have both the dashboard and the ability to have just one registration site,” Samaniego said.
Until then, though, the judge expects University Medical Center to have two more individual registration opportunities.
The state is also ordering nearly 500,000 second doses for those who got their first shot a few weeks ago.
Texas has administered nearly 6.3 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. More than 4 million people have received at least one dose and more than 2.2 million are fully vaccinated.
