According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) on Thursday the number of Texans that have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine is now over 7.4 million.
In her weekly update Associate Commissioner Imelda Garcia announced that this breaks down to 4.8 million people who have received one dose and 2.6 million people that are fully vaccinated.
On Wednesday DSHS announced that Texas will be expanding vaccination to Phase 1C, people 50 to 64 years of age on March 15.
"More than 93 percent of the Texas fatalities directly caused by the coronavirus have been in people 50 and older, with those ages 50 to 64 accounting for 20 percent of all fatalities," said Garcia.
"By including this next most vulnerable group, Texas will continue to reduce the number of people who are hospitalized and die from the disease across all races, ethnicities and occupations."
In her Thursday news conference Garcia said she expects to see the list of Texans eligible for the COVID vaccine to grow at a quicker pace than has been the case so far. "There's about 5-million people in this 1C priority group and more than one million have already been vaccinated."
Next week Texas is expected to receive 800-thousand vaccines from the Federal Government, which is down just over 200-thousand from this past week. "While it's a bit of a letdown that after a million-plus doses we got this week, this week will still be the third largest allocation we've received so far," said Garcia.
The latest downturn will also include a smaller allocation of the new one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
"The Federal government has sent out all the Johnson & Johnson vaccines that have been manufactured this week," Garcia added.
"However they have indicated to us that we expect to receive a much larger supply by the end of this month."
Production is expected to accelerate now that the pharmaceutical company Merck has joined the vaccine production effort.
