TEMPLE, Texas — Baylor Scott & White Temple will receive its first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday afternoon.
"Temple is one of the first sites to receive the vaccine," said Dr. Tresa McNeal with Baylor Scott & White.
BS&W Temple is one of 23 sites to receive the first wave of the vaccine approved by the FDA Friday. It will receive 3,900 doses on Tuesday.
Dr. McNeal said front line workers have worked especially hard this year and while the vaccine is not required, she said the list is long for those that have said they want it.
"Healthcare workers are lining up to get the vaccine. We have many many people that are ready to get it beyond the frontline workers that are at the highest level of risk," she said.
Immunizations will begin as early as tomorrow afternoon.
BS&W Temple, Ascension Providence and Baylor Scott and White - Hillcrest in Waco were set to receive a combined total of nearly 6,000 doses of the vaccine. The Temple medical center will receive 3,900 doses, while the Waco locations will receive 975 doses each.
Texas will receive more than 220,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine in the first week of distribution, state health officials said.
Those doses will be shipping to 109 hospitals across 34 counties, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
"We are just so grateful as a team that the vaccine is here," McNeal said. "It's a great day around here getting people signed up for the vaccine. There's a lot of excitement among our physicians, other providers, nurses and other frontline employees."
Dr. McNeal called those who worked tirelessly to make this happen and to fast-track the vaccine as part of Operation Warp Speed, "heroic" but she also understands the concerns many Central Texans have about a vaccine engineered so quickly.
"I want to encourage people that safety measures have been taken along the way and our FDA is very rigorous in its analysis of the vaccine," she said. "Just to put people's minds at ease a little bit, the basis for this vaccine has been studied extensively since 2005. It's just that we've been able to use that basis and have the more specificity related to COVID applied to this."
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