One thousand five hundred doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are being administered at the Matagorda County fairgrounds on Friday. Anyone age 65 and older is eligible, according to a spokesman with the Texas Department of Emergency Management, which is operating the clinic.
The clinic, which is part of Gov. Greg Abbott鈥檚 Save Our Seniors program, will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday at 4511 Farm to Market Road 2668. The clinic also gave out doses Thursday.
This is the . This week, 28 counties were given the option to operate centralized vaccination clinics or mobile clinics for homebound seniors, said TDEM spokesperson Seth Christensen.
If the county is unable to administer all 1,500 doses to seniors age 65 and older, additional doses may be allocated to people in other priority groups, including people age 50 and older, people with qualifying medical conditions, educators and child care workers, Christensen said.
The counties were selected based on the number of vaccines they have received in previous weeks. The Save Our Seniors program is intended to expand vaccine access in counties where the lowest proportion of seniors have been vaccinated in an effort to make distribution more equitable, according to a press release from the governor鈥檚 office.
This week, 18,000 doses will be administered with the help of the Texas National Guard.
Matagorda County spokesman Mitch Thames said the county has received relatively few doses even though medical officials in Bay City have the capacity to administer as many as 1,000 doses a day. Less than 5,000 of the county鈥檚 more than 28,000 residents aged 16 and up had received a first dose as of Thursday, according to state data.
As of Thursday afternoon, things were running smoothly at the clinic, Thames said. Aside from the required 15-minute post-vaccination waiting period, there was little delay at the fairgrounds.
鈥淚 was very impressed with their speed,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 expected lines, and there are none.鈥
