Texas receives more doses of vaccine than expected this week as virus cases decline but deaths increase

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas is expected to receive more than 520,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine this week, more than what state officials initially planned to receive.

In El Paso, the vaccination center run by the University Medical Center will receive 8,775 of these doses, while the center operated by the city of El Paso will receive 5,000.

Texas State Department health officials said the increase in state dose allocation was due to two factors: a 30% increase in the Moderna vaccine supplied by the federal government and a One-time return of 126,750 doses of Pfizer vaccine. that Texas had been forced to reserve for a federal program to immunize residents and staff of long-term care facilities.

The state health department said those returned doses will be given to counties where allocations have been significantly lower than their share of the population, which is not the case in El Paso where allocations have exceeded its. percentage of population.

The state has received nearly 2.9 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Providers in Texas administered nearly 2.3 million doses of the vaccine, according to the state health department. More than 1.8 million people have received at least one dose and more than 448,000 have been fully immunized.

Texas health officials reported 11,155 new probable cases of the coronavirus and 171 additional deaths from the illness caused by the virus on Sunday.

There have been nearly 2.1 million cases of the virus and 36,491 deaths from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the Texas Department of Health.

Hospitalizations in the state continued to decline, with 11,220 patients reported on Sunday. That’s down from the high of 14,218 on Jan.11.

Over the past two weeks, the seven-day moving average of Covid deaths in Texas has fallen from 305.71 per day to 325.86, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and Texas ranked eighth in the country for the number of new cases per capita with 882.41. cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

The moving average of new cases in the state rose from 22,520.29 per day to 16,962.71, according to data from Johns Hopkins.