ABILENE, TX – With about 3,000 of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines en route to Taylor County, frontline healthcare workers will be up first to receive it. The county’s public health director says it could be the middle of next year before the general public can do the same.
According to Abilene-Taylor County Public Health District Director Annette Lerma, the first doses of the vaccines are slated to be given to workers on the front lines of the pandemic by the end of January.
Next in line as part of Phase One of the state’s vaccine distribution plan would be fields such as EMS workers and private practice physicians, Lerma says.
“Free-standing emergency care facilities, normal physicians, school nurses, funeral home workers,” said Lerma in a Zoom interview Tuesday. “That time frame is February to July.”
Depending on the state’s supply of the vaccine and whether all Phase One qualifiers have received it, only then would the health district start offering the shots to the general public.
Lerma says her department is getting ready for that distribution whether it comes in the form of a mass drive-thru scenario or one-on-one appointments with the health district.
“If we were only to get 100 doses here at public health, we would most likely just do our normal immunization clinic like we do here. We would have people come in and schedule those appointments for people to come into our clinics,” said Lerma.
We could be in the final chapter of the pandemic, one Lerma says she hopes will end soon – answering the prayers of many people she knows.
“Those working directly with the patients and seeing death and the struggle first hand, I can only imagine that they are more elated than we are. It’s an answer to a lot of prayer and we’re hopeful that it will be the beginning of the end for this pandemic,” said Lerma.
