Breckenridge Texan

By Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan

Stephens Memorial Hospital will be holding a COVID-19 vaccination clinic today, Wednesday, March 31, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. or until they run out of the 100 doses of vaccine they will have on hand.

The clinic will be held at First Baptist Church in their Family Life Center located at 301 S. Rose St. Any adult 18 years or older is eligible to receive the vaccination, according to Chris Curtis, Director of Business Development at SMH. He said it doesn’t matter where you live or if you have insurance or not. There is no charge for the vaccination, but you do need to have a photo ID with you. If somebody does have insurance, he said, they can make a copy of the card and bill their insurance company for an administrative fee, but there will no charge to the patent.

At today’s clinic, they will be providing the first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The second dose will be administered in 4–6 weeks.

For today’s clinic, Curtis said, they are only going to thaw 100 doses of the vaccine and then provide vaccinations until 3 p.m. or until they run out of the vaccines. He said they don’t want to thaw out too many doses of the vaccine at one time because the vaccine has to be used within certain amount of time after it has been thawed out.

“So we don’t want to thaw a bunch out and have to waste it,” he said. “That’s why we do them in the batches like we do. Because if we thawed out 200 and (only) 100 people showed up, that would be 100 wasted. So it’s, you know, it’s a guessing game, really, but we’ve been pretty fortunate to not have to waste any.”

Curtis said they will hold more clinics at the church in the coming weeks on Wednesdays and Fridays. He said that their plan is to give shots on Wednesdays to people who need the first dose of the vaccines and on Fridays give shots to people who are scheduled to receive their second dose of the vaccine. However, he said, they will not hold a clinic this Friday because it’s Good Friday.

“That’s kind of going to be our plan of attack,” he said. “And that way, it just kind of provides some consistency to it.”

He said using the Family Life Center at the church works well for the clinics because there’s plenty of room for everybody to be spaced outs. ”It’s really accessible to anybody in a wheelchair or a walker, and … it’s easy to get to,” he said. “And then we also run out and do some in their car. If it’s just a big challenge to get out, we just do them in a car.”

Additionally, Curtis said Breckenridge Medical Clinic also periodically gets some vaccines and offers them on a first-come-first-served basis. He said BMC is still working through getting all of their patients vaccinated, especially now that it’s open to anyone 18 and over.

He said although the state is allowing people 16 and 17 to get vaccinated, Pfizer is the only vaccine currently approved for use in the younger patents and currently SMH does not have any of that vaccine available.

Cutline, top photo: Erika Cervera, a nursing student at Texas State Technical College, gives a COVID-19 vaccination to a patient during a clinic earlier this month, at First Baptist Church in Breckenridge. She was one of several TSTC nursing students who were assisting Stephens Memorial Hospital personnel during the clinic as part of their training. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)

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