Some North Texas hospitals have been able to vaccinate more people than expected

DALLAS - Thousands more COVID-19 vaccine doses are headed to North Texas next week.

This time, retail pharmacies, local health departments, and fire departments, along with hospitals in Denton County which were left off the week one allocation, are now getting vaccine shipments.

More than 460,000 Moderna vaccine doses and nearly 160,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine are headed to Texas.

And some hospitals say they’ve been able to vaccinate even more employees than expected with the first round of COVID-19 vaccines.

Hospital officials at Parkland and Methodist said they were only expecting to get about five doses of vaccine out of the vials they were sent, but started noticing they could get six or seven doses out of each vial.

The result is hundreds more people who are able to get vaccinated in this first round.

"20% more doses, 20% more people we can treat," said Jon Albrecht, chief pharmacy officer for Methodist Health System.

It was a pleasant surprise as hospitals discovered they’re able to vaccinate more people than originally expected.

Both Parkland and Methodist hospitals said they were able to get more doses out of their initial vaccine shipments by using a certain type of syringe.

"What we found real quick was we were able to get six doses out of a vial pretty easily. We could almost get seven," Albrecht said.

A nurse holds a phial of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Guy's Hospital, in central London on December 8, 2020. (Photo by Victoria Jones / POOL / AFP)

The FDA was notified and gave the green light to use the extra doses.

Both Parkland and Methodist hospitals are expecting another 1,950 doses each of the Pfizer vaccine delivered Monday.

With the extra doses in each vial, Parkland estimates the actual number of doses will be closer to 2,300, and Parkland will also be getting 5,000 Moderna vaccine doses next week.

Methodist officials believe other hospitals across the country were also able to get more doses out of their first vaccine shipment.

"Methodist by virtue of having it on Day 1, we probably saw it before other people, but I think across the country, as people were starting to work with it, they saw that, ‘Hey guys there’s a lot of doses here we’re wasting,’" Albrecht explained.

So far, Methodist has vaccinated more than 3,000 employees, and Parkland has vaccinated more than 3,800.

"One of the things that’s a requirement under this emergency use…we have to report any significant side effects and thus far, knock on wood, we haven’t," Albrecht said.

Methodist officials expect to be done vaccinating all employees who want the vaccine after their second vaccine shipment coming next week, and are already making plans to help others.

"We have strong interest in helping out our first responders and providing that, and our administration is already providing some direction to go after that, to make that available," Albrecht said.

In the next round shipping out next week, select pharmacies, health departments, and fire departments are also getting vaccine doses.

Other hospitals, like Medical City, UT-Southwestern, and JPS Hospital, are all getting more doses delivered next week.