CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A lot of folks were practicing patience as they waited to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Vaccinations were supposed to be administered around 12 p.m. Monday but were not administered until around 3 p.m.
Administrators of the vaccine are only checking that someone has registered and not whether they are of priority status to get the vaccine, but city officials said they are using the honor system.
Peter Zanoni said 4,000 doses came in and said they have administered around 2,000 vaccinations Monday.
Originally the 4,000 vaccines were expected to last through Thursday, but Zanoni said that based on Monday's production capacity, they are expected to administer the remaining 2,000 doses of vaccine by Tuesday.
"If someone is planning on Wednesday or Thursday, they have to plan for next week frankly," he said. "This is the beginning, we are going to get vaccines every week."
While Zanoni said there had been some push back from residents via social media regarding the change in plans as far as the number of vaccines to administer, they weren't going to turn away people that had been sitting in line for hours, he said.
"And because the vaccine was delayed in getting to us by five hours we didn't want to tell all those people, 'You know what, sorry you've got to go home because we're past the 500 number,'" Zanoni said. "It would have been like pouring salt into a wound. Some people had been there since 4 a.m. We weren't about to send them home knowing we had the vaccine right there."
"So this is a plan adjustment, and we're going to continue to do this as we progress, this is day one of probably what will be several hundred days of doing vaccines," he added.
The county borrowed 200 vaccines from the Amistad Community Health Center and those were administered within the first 15 minutes, Nueces County officials said.
In order to borrow those doses, they had to receive approval from the state and follow a strict process, Zanoni said.
“We want people to be as honest as they can. We want to be sensitive to that population that’s high at risk and not be selfish,” he added.
According to the City of Corpus Christi, the 500 pre-registration spots for Tuesday are already filled.
City of Corpus Christi officials say they are willing to administer the 2000 vaccination doses left over out of the total 4000 they got Monday.
