Texas to receive more than 1M COVID-19 vaccines next week
The Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is packed up and prepared to ship.
DALLAS - Just in time for the statewide mask order to end, Texas will get more than 1 million first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine next week.
Texas is near the bottom of the list of states and United States territories for vaccinations. It has only vaccinated about 14% of its population while the top states are all above 20%.
The big winter storm is partly to blame for delaying the effort in Texas.
Health officials think the newly-approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine will help Texas catch up since it only requires one shot to fully protect people.
"With the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, we will have about 220,000 more doses coming into our state allocation. So that helps us have much more widespread across from all of our providers," said Imelda Garcia with the state’s health department.
About 24,000 J&J vaccines will go to the three federally-operated sites in Texas next week – Fair Park in Dallas, Globe Life Field in Arlington and NRG Stadium in Houston.