Vaccines May be Coming to UTEP Next Week

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Students and Colleagues,

A little good news to keep you informed. We have received preliminary notification that we will likely be getting 975 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine next week. Still not 100% certain, but I wanted to let you know. 

When we get the formal notification and the shipment arrival date, those Miners who have signed up and filled out all of the consent forms and are in the highest priority groups will get an email to schedule a vaccination appointment.     

The highest priority group for vaccination includes healthcare workers in clinical settings who work directly with COVID-19 positive patients or infectious materials, those who work in long-term care facilities, emergency medical teams, home health care providers, hospice workers, outpatient staff who work with symptomatic patients, community pharmacy staff, public health workers, people involved in COVID-19 testing and vaccination programs, school nurses and those who work in mortuaries. As of yesterday, UTEP had 1,217 faculty, staff and students signed up in this group – many of them students and faculty who work in clinical settings.

We know that some of these 1,217 have managed to get vaccinated through the hospitals during the past few weeks, which is great.

If we still have doses after the highest priority group has been vaccinated, we will vaccinate Miners who are 65 and older or 18 and older who have one of the health conditions that makes them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. We have 1,634 Miners as of yesterday in that group. 

Only those who have signed up and completed all of the paperwork will be contacted for vaccination. If you haven’t done so, you can sign up here. There will be no walk-in vaccinations.

We want to take care of our people so that we can teach, research and serve without the constraints that the pandemic has put on us. We also know from working with the hospitals and the city that, as the supply of vaccine increases over the coming weeks and months, we may need to expand our program to include families, alumni and others to be part of an effort that vaccinates a lot of people in a short period of time. We will try to help.

We all have gifts. Our School of Pharmacy, our software team, our environmental health staff, our facilities workers, our managers and dozens of others chose to develop their gifts in a way that is desperately needed in this moment. As educators, that’s worth reflecting upon.  

All of us benefit because we live in an educated community where people have sought knowledge and are using that knowledge to improve the health of our community. Our lives are better because of them.

That makes me thankful that a place like UTEP is here. I hope you feel the same way.

Best,

Heather Wilson
President