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WellMed mass vaccination hotline opening up Saturday

9,000 doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine have been allocated to the City of San Antonio.

SAN ANTONIO — More vaccination appointments opening tomorrow in San Antonio.

The WellMed call center is gearing up for a busy Saturday as they re-open their coronavirus vaccination hotline. The state allocated 9,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine to be administered by two locations in the city. 

The reason they are doing it on the phone and not online is because it is the easiest way for anyone, no matter your age, or if you do or don't have internet, to get through and vaccinated. Of course with between 30 and 50 operators and hundreds of thousands of calls an hour, not everyone is going to get through. You just have to keep trying.

Dr. Michael Almaleh, Chief of Cardiology and Specialty Care for WellMed and Medical Director for the covid vaccination efforts for WellMed told us, "We have established two large vaccination clinics for the city of San Antonio. One mass vaccination clinic on the southside of San Antonio in our Cisneros Senior Center and the other one is a large vaccination clinic at our Lopez Senior Center on the west side of San Antonio.

Dr. Almaleh said between the two clinics they'll be vaccinating 1,500 people a day for as long as they can.

"The vaccine we are administering currently is a two vaccine series separated by 28 days," he said.

The hotline opens Saturday at 8 a.m. and will run through 8 p.m. The number to call is 833-968-1745. Dr. Almaleh said safety in the facilities is their number one priority with social distancing and as much of a contactless environment as possible.

"All of our individuals who are vaccinated are observed for the appropriate time as recommended by Moderna and the CDC, and we are able to get them in and out of the vaccination facility within about 21 minutes," Dr. Almaleh said.

They're asking those who have had COVID-19 in the past 90 days to wait to be vaccinated since you'd still have immunity and others are at a higher risk. Also those who received any other vaccine within the past 14 days are also asked to wait.

If you don't get through and you are calling on a landline, you'll hear, "All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later." On a cell phone you'll hear, "The line you are trying to reach is out of service." In either case, it just means it is busy, and to keep trying. A lot of people are going to be calling so you're just going to have to have patience.

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