With the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic now underway, getting San Antonians vaccinated as quickly as possible is a crucial goal. Our city was hit hard by the pandemic. We have recorded more than 208,000 COVID-19 cases and 3,200 deaths. But now good news has arrived. More than 370,000 San Antonio residents are fully vaccinated, and more than 600,000 people have received at least one dose. Our community positivity rate is down to 2.4 percent.
Through a combination of wearing masks, keeping our distance from people who don’t live in our household, and getting vaccinated, we have been able to stop the winter surge and reduce the number of people getting sick and hospitalized with COVID-19. Still, the virus remains present throughout all parts of our community, and we must continue using the safety protocols while the vaccination process is under way.
The best way to halt the spread of COVID-19 – and to stop it from mutating into possibly more dangerous variants – is for as many of us as possible to get vaccinated. Each week we are vaccinating thousands of San Antonio residents at mass vaccination sites, doctors’ offices and pharmacies. I urge you get vaccinated as soon as you can.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved these vaccines for emergency use. That means you can feel safe getting vaccinated. For those who haven’t been able to register for an appointment, several methods are available.
If you don’t have access to the Internet, you can call 311 or you can get text notifications informing you when more appointments are available. To sign up for the text alerts, text VACCINE to 55000, or in Spanish text VACUNA to 55000.
On the Internet, check covid19.sanantonio.gov/Services/Vaccination-for-COVID-19 to check or appointments at the Alamodome. To sign up for University’s Health’s mass vaccination site, go to wecandoit.com. Additionally, if you are 70 years or older, you can go to the Alamodome during afternoon hours without an appointment and receive a vaccine.
In addition to the mass vaccination sites, the state sent vaccine doses to numerous other providers in Bexar County this week. I encourage you to check with your doctor’s office to see if they have vaccine doses. More than 50,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were sent to Bexar County by the state of Texas this week. The vast majority of those were Moderna and Pfizer.
Through the cooperative efforts of the City of San Antonio and Bexar County, we have the capacity to vaccinate even more people each week, but we have not been able to get as many vaccine doses as we can use. The amount of vaccine doses we receive each week has recently increased, but the supply situation remains problematic.
The growth in vaccine supply has hit a temporary roadblock. Production problems at a Baltimore plant have slowed the flow of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna doses continue to arrive in larger quantities. County Judge Nelson Wolff and I continue to push the state and FEMA for more vaccines now.
Our community stood as one and have declared that we will come out stronger than before. We will get through this, our faith will be stronger for it, and it has been the privilege of a lifetime to be able to serve alongside you in these difficult times.
So let’s work together to focus on healthy people, a healthy economy, healthy opportunities for a healthy future for San Antonio.
Ron Nirenberg is mayor of San Antonio.
