UTEP to begin vaccinating students, staff after getting 1st shipment of doses

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — The University of Texas at El Paso has received its first shipment of the Covid-19 vaccine. The university received nearly 1,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Thursday.

The university will vaccinate only current students, faculty members and staff initially. UTEP President Heather Wilson the university may ultimately expand the program at a later time to include more members of the public.

Members of the school community working in healthcare or other frontline industries will be prioritized for early doses. If any extra doses remain, the university will begin vaccinating faculty members, staff or students who are older than 65 or older than 18 with a health condition. 

The vaccines will be administered by students in UTEP’s School of Pharmacy with help from faculty. 

Wilson said it makes sense for UTEP to host a vaccine program due to the infrastructure and resources the university has.

“We train a lot of people at UTEP and we have the faculty who can also oversee this” Wilson said. “We have the research capability. We have the machinery, particularly the very cold freezers that are required for these special vaccines.”

Wilson also cited the university’s ability to communicate with a large population. 

“The ability to communicate directly with 27,000 people, get them signed up through our own university systems, get them sorted into priority groups and communicate with them and have them be able to schedule online,” she said. “All of that is enabled by our university information technology group. We wrote the software to be able to do this.”

Current students, faculty members and staff can pre-register for the vaccine using links the university has emailed to them. If they have not received that link, more information can be found on the university’s website. Once an individual has pre-registered, UTEP will contact them to set up an appointment. No walk-ins will be accepted.