Texas Expecting Over 1 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Next Week
AUSTIN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Texas expects more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses next week, state officials said Friday.
According to a Texas Department of State Health Services statement, the vaccines will be first doses, with 245,000 doses being the new single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The federal government will send more than 200,000 doses directly to pharmacies and federally qualified health centers. The state will distribute more than 930,000 first doses to providers in all but 20 of the state's counties, along with 457,000 second doses.
State health officials said Texas has administered nearly 6.3 million doses, with more than 4 million people having received at least one dose.
Meantime, the state reported 5,913 new confirmed and probable cases Friday of the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, bringing the total of Texas cases during the pandemic to 2,678,295. The state estimates that 147,360 of those cases were active Friday. Of those, 5,065 cases required hospitalization as of Thursday, the most recent day for which the state provided data. That was 198 fewer than Wednesday.
With 256 newly reported deaths, the Texas pandemic death toll rose to 44,134.
Over the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new cases has increased by 1,692.1, an increase of 30.5%, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)