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Houston scrambles to give vaccines after power outage

Virus Outbreak Vaccines
Posted at 3:41 PM, Feb 15, 2021
and last updated 2021-02-15 17:41:03-05

Officials in Houston say massive power outages across Texas because of a winter storm knocked out electricity to a facility storing over 8,000 doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine.

The outages forced Houston health officials Monday to scramble to distribute the doses before they went bad. More than 2 million people across Texas are without power after a massive storm system dropped temperatures into single digits as far south as San Antonio.

The Moderna vaccines in Houston were distributed to hospitals, a county jail and Rice University. Sophomore Harry Golen says he and some friends waited nearly four hours, much of it outdoors in the frigid cold, outside a campus gymnasium to get the shots.

Texas health officials say the weather has delayed the shipment of more COVID-19 vaccines to the state until at least Wednesday.