HOUSTON — Gov. Greg Abbott expects the first round of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine doses to be available to healthcare workers as soon as Monday.
This week, the Houston-area should get nearly 56,000 doses to hospitals where healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, technicians, EMS workers, etc.) and those who work in long-term healthcare facilities will get it first.
“It’s going to be yet one more tool in our toolbox and one more weapon in our armory in the fight against COVID-19," CEO Dr. Esmaeil Porsa of Harris Health. “The vaccine is not a panacea. It is not be all, end all.”
Hospitals in the Medical Center plan to vaccinate thousands of employees each day.
Harris Health hospitals like Ben Taub Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, and their clinics, will give it to their staff Monday as well, making them one of the first field hospitals in the country to get the vaccine, Porsa said.
Doctors believe the general public will have to wait until spring to get their doses, which is why Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has continued to open testing sites across her district.
“Testing is going to have to be parallel to vaccines until every American is vaccinated," Rep. Jackson Lee said.
In the meantime, Porsa said we must keep up healthy habits of masking, social distancing, washing our hands, and staying at home until the spring when the vaccine is widely available.
“All those things have been effective and continue to be effective in our fight against COVID-19," said Porsa. “If we can do this for the next 90 days, come springtime, we should be in a much better situation."