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The COVID vaccine is here! Dell Medical School will begin administering shots on Tuesday
Pfizer shipped its first allotment of COVID vaccines from its Kalamazoo plant on Sunday.
UT Health Austin, the clinical practice of Dell Medical School, was the first site in Central Texas to receive doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning and will begin administering it to frontline healthcare workers on Tuesday.
UT Health Austin received 2,925 doses of the vaccine, which requires a second dose around three weeks after the first is administered. It is one of only four sites across the state to gain such early access.
The first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have arrived @UTAustin, among four Texas facilities to receive the first ro… https://t.co/wqIqfcRrYz— UT Health Austin (@UT Health Austin) 1607964193.0
UT Health San Antonio, UT's MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Methodist Dallas Medical Center also received vaccine shipments—between 4,875 and 5,850 doses—on Monday.
Ten other facilities in Hays, Travis and Williamson counties will receive vaccine shipments later this week as part of the initial allotment, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The Pfizer vaccine has already been administered in other parts of the country.
A critical care nurse in New York was among the first in the U.S. to receive the initial dose of the two-part vaccine.
"I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe," said Sandra Lindsay, who is the director of critical care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens.
BREAKING: Critical care nurse in New York is among first in US to receive a coronavirus vaccine: "We all need to do… https://t.co/A6jgtYiXYv— MSNBC (@MSNBC) 1607956457.0
The vaccine was also administered to frontline healthcare workers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, GW Hospital in Washington D.C. and Ohio State University's Wexner Center in Columbus.
The first and second COVID vaccines at @GWHospital have been administered! https://t.co/MSct7DsPZa— Peter Sacco (@Peter Sacco) 1607975938.0
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Monday that 20 million Americans should be able to get the first dose of the COVID vaccine by the end of December.
This is contingent on the approval of an emergency use authorization for Moderna's COVID vaccine, which will be reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday.
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Popular
(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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