After winter weather forced major COVID-19 vaccine hubs to shut down last week, Dallas and Tarrant counties faced another setback when the state announced it would cut their allotment of doses to zero this week for Dallas County Health and Human Services and Tarrant County Public. Health.
Other nodes in the counties, such as Parkland Hospital in Dallas and Texas Health in Fort Worth, will still receive large amounts of the vaccine.
“We have people waiting on the list since January to get a vaccine,
so we need them not to mess with the North Texas vaccine, ”Judge Clay Jenkins said in Dallas.
The state move comes after partnerships with FEMA were announced in both provinces.
This week, FEMA begins operating vaccine hubs in Dallas’ Fair Park and
Arlington’s Globe Life Field. Both sites will vaccinate 21,000 people per week for three weeks and aim to vaccinate people living in underserved zip codes.
Dallas County Health and Human Services
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said he was confident that the state’s vaccination supply would not be cut before agreeing to the FEMA partnership.
“It’s pretty disappointing,” Whitley said. “We’re doing everything we said we would and we just want the state to stand up and do what they agreed to when we agreed to become a FEMA site.”
Whitley said the state move cut 16,000 vaccines from their expected allocation this week and caused them to scramble at other vaccination sites.
Late Monday, Whitley said Texas Health Resources had agreed to give 5,000 of their doses to the health department to help vaccinate more people off the county’s waiting list.
Jenkins said the state’s decision means that at least 9,000 fewer people will be vaccinated this week than they expected. He said the state’s decision also affected vaccination allocations at other vaccination sites in the province.
“The state is getting a record amount of vaccine this week. We don’t ask for more than what we get. We just ask for what citizens get each week,” Jenkins said.
NBC 5 contacted the Texas Department of State Health Services and Gov. Gregg Abbott’s office for insight into the decision and received the following statement from a DSHS spokesperson.
The vaccine assigned to Dallas and Tarrant counties is roughly on par with where it has been for the past several weeks when counting the doses associated with the FEMA effort. With a windfall of more than 84,000 doses going to just three counties, the Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel recommended sending additional doses to parts of the state that have not received nearly as much vaccine, in line with the principle of an equal distribution of the vaccine. vaccine all over the state. . This allowed us to allocate vaccine to 230 counties for next week, most of each week so far.
The vaccine is assigned from week to week and the amount of vaccines available changes every week.
Both Whitley and Jenkins have contacted the health department and the governor’s office to appeal the decision.
Would you like to get on a vaccine waiting list?
As the state begins distributing COVID-19 vaccines for those in Phase 1A and 1B, the county’s health departments have begun waiting lists for those seeking to be vaccinated.
You can now register to receive the vaccination in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties. Links are below:
Waiting list links: Collin – Search waiting list | Dallas | Denton | Tarrant
You don’t need to be a county resident to register in that county for a COVID-19 vaccine – registration is open to anyone in Texas. For those without Internet access, Tarrant County also takes phone registrations at 817-248-6299. In Dallas County, call the DCHHS vaccine hotline at 1-855-IMMUNE9 (1-855-466-8639). In Denton County, call 940-349-2585.