NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 38,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson COVID vaccine are headed to Louisiana.
The state's department of health says they are being shipped late Monday. If all goes as planned, they should arrive mid-week.
So let's walk you through the steps you need to take to get one.
A mass vaccination site at the New Orleans Convention Center is ready to go when LCMC hears how many doses they are getting.
“As soon as we find out that we'll have the vaccine available, that will let us know how many slots we can open up and it will also tell us what day we can start this process,” said Dr. Jeffrey Elder, LCMC Medical Director for Emergency Management and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center.
When they know the number of doses, the phone and online registration will open. There's no advance registration now. That could happen at the end of this week or sometime next week.
“We think that will mean many tens of thousands now a week additionally in the state will be vaccinated,” Dr. Elder said.
Ochsner has also not been told how many Johnson and Johnson vaccines they will get or when. So right now they are still scheduling appointments for their Pfizer and Moderna allocations, but when it does become available, possibly this week, they encourage people to take the one that is offered.
“These vaccines are safe they are extremely effective and they prevent death from COVID, all of them,” said Dr. Sandra Kemmerly, Ochsner System Medical Director of Hospital Quality and Infectious Disease Specialist.
“They would take the first vaccine that's available to them. All of these vaccines have been shown in the clinical trials to prevent death due to COVID,” said Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, Ochsner System Medical Director of Infection Control and Prevention and Infectious Disease Specialist.
The rollout of the new vaccine doesn't change how make an appointment at Ochsner. It is still through your Ochsner web portal or the call line, but later this week, they will announce new vaccine sites.
Each site will have only one company's vaccine product, so if it is not the vaccine you want, you will have to start the process all over again and reschedule.
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