First Person To Receive COVID Vaccine In North Texas Reflects One Year Later

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - It's hard to believe but one year ago on Tuesday, Teresa Mata, an employee at Methodist Dallas Medical Center made history.

She became the first person in North Texas to received a COVID-19 vaccine.

It was December 14th, 2020, and she said she was thinking of her family when she got it.

"If you want to protect your family, if you want to protect yourself, please take the vaccine," Mata said.

The two-dose COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration on December 11.

Three days later medical frontline workers in North Texas became the first group to receive it.

Mata recently got her booster as well.

Lining up to get the shots was Dr. Brad Sellers, an emergency room doctor at Methodist Dallas.

"It was a great time for us because we knew that we would be protected to this disease that was killing so many people," Sellers said.  "It was a relief for us."

What happened that day gave frontline workers hope and a sense of protection both physically and mentally. It also saved lives, Sellers said.

The pandemic, politics and misinformation created another kind of debate. Debate on whether to mask or not, to vaccinate or not -- which continues despite a recent study using real-life data  that found that vaccines are highly effective in reducing hospitalization by 89 percent and ICU admissions by 90 percent.

For Mata and her family, none of that matters

"I am alive, I'm here. Look at me," she said.  "I'm not sick. I didn't die. So come and take a shot.  That's it!"