Texas will receive more vaccine doses than expected this week

HOUSTON – Texas was set to receive more than 520,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine this week, more than state officials said they originally planned to receive

Texas State Department health officials said the dose increase was due to two factors: a 30% increase in the federally supplied Moderna vaccine and a one-time return of 126,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. that Texas had been. should be reserved for a federal vaccination program for residents and staff of long-term care facilities.

The health department said those returned doses would be given to counties where allocations were significantly lower than their share of the population, particularly in the suburban areas of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

The Houston health department said this week it will focus its vaccine allocation on those most at risk of serious illness and those in vulnerable communities.

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“We know that it is important to immunize the most vulnerable and that they should be among the first to be immunized, especially when supply is scarce,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner.

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.