Clinical nursing students from Galen College of Nursing were on hand recently to help administer the COVID vaccine around San Antonio, Texas.

Galen students help administer the COVID vaccine in Texas. Photo from KSAT-TV12.

About 200 people received their first dose of the vaccine in New Braunfels, as Comal County health officials opened a mass vaccination clinic at New Braunfels Civic/Convention Center, according to an article in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung newspaper.

“If we ran everybody through the public health department, we would have limited space, limited nurses, limited slots, but if we move into a facility like this where we can get nursing students to volunteer, we can do this on a larger scale,” Cheryl Fraser, Comal County public health director, told the newspaper.

Galen students also helped administer the vaccine at the Schertz Civic Center in nearby Guadalupe County, and they had a full house: Patrick Pinder, fire marshal and emergency management coordinator for Guadalupe County, told KSAT-TV12 News that residents filled all 975 slots quickly.

“The link went live (Wednesday) and it filled up within two minutes,” Pinder told the TV station.

Galen clinical students and clinical faculty from the campus in Louisville, Kentucky, have also been trained to help administer the vaccine around Kentucky.