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Baton Rouge General opens new COVID vaccination clinic, tripling number of doses distributed daily

3 years 2 months 6 days ago Wednesday, January 20 2021 Jan 20, 2021 January 20, 2021 7:48 PM January 20, 2021 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - Health officials at Baton Rouge General say their brand new clinic is prepped and they are ready to vaccinate as many people as possible.

Patients have waited a while for the shot, but today, shots were quickly distributed in the new clinic.

Since the demand for COVID-19 vaccines is so high, BRG opened a new wing at their Bluebonnet campus that will allow vaccine distribution to triple the number of doses distributed each day. It's dedicated specifically to qualified patients who are in line for the COVID-19 vaccine.

"We started delivering maybe 20 to 30 a day. We went from 50 to 100, and now we're doing roughly about 1,500 first doses a week between all of our facilities," CEO Edgardo Tenreiro said.

For patients like Lucille Johnson, getting the shot is important.

"I'm just really relieved that I was able to get the shot because I have pre-existing conditions and I was concerned," Johnson said.

Health care workers at the new clinic are now able to vaccinate up to 150 people a day.

It's an efficient process that's solely dependent on the number of vaccines available. Tenreiro says right now, demand far exceeds supply.

"We can do more if we had more vaccine. Our goal as a nation and at the state level is really to secure as many vaccines as possible so that sites like this one can begin to immunize more people," he said.

But when that time comes, health officials say they'll be ready.

"Last week we started at one of our local clinics and decided that we need to go bigger. So we opened up this center so that we can have easier patient access, and we can be more efficient in giving out more vaccines throughout the day," Clinical Director Shelly Martinez said.

Hospital officials say the new campus will allow BRG to vaccinate thousands of people each week as more vaccines become available.

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