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AUSTIN – State Representative Michelle Beckley D-Carrollton does not have special access to the coronavirus vaccine simply because she is an elected official.
She is a member of Group 1B, the second group eligible for the vaccine on the state’s priority list. She has a pre-existing condition that makes her more vulnerable to coronavirus, with her priority designation only following that of first responders, healthcare workers and nursing home residents.
So when the state announced Tuesday that vaccine suppliers could immediately begin immunizing members of the Second Group, which also includes anyone 65 and older, Beckley called. For hours.
Four different providers could not give him the vaccine, but for different reasons – one was not open, another said they only had enough doses for the medical staff, a third was running out of their supply and a fourth came and went with it. on a convoluted messaging channel.
It didn’t make sense. The day before, Governor Greg Abbott said state data showed that a “significant portion” of the coronavirus vaccine allocation in Texas was on the shelves. The state health services department commissioner urged all providers to immediately begin immunizing members of the second group, saying he did not want an unused dose.
But on the ground, suppliers statewide say they are running out of supplies – and many still haven’t made their way into the first priority group of frontline workers. And if Beckley was finally able to make a coveted date next week, other members of Group 1B were not so lucky and do not know where to turn or who to consult for their vaccinations.
“There is all the confusion,” Beckley said. “There is nothing slick about it.”
Availability
State data on Wednesday showed 205,463 people received a vaccine against the coronavirus, while 678,925 doses were distributed to vaccine providers – pharmacies, hospitals and other entities – across Texas.
But this data does not fully capture the scene. The state’s notification system experienced an ingestion error during the Christmas holidays that excluded about 48,000 doses from official data. Another 27,000 vaccines are yet to be uploaded because some vendors used the wrong number to rank while submitting immunization data to the state, DSHS spokeswoman Lara Anton said. These issues should be resolved in the coming days.
Then, another 144,400 doses of Moderna vaccine – one of two currently approved by the federal government – were delayed during shipment, arriving a week later than expected. Suppliers didn’t start receiving those doses until Monday or Tuesday, but they were reflected in state data earlier.
And there is the usual lag of reports. Providers have 24 hours to submit their immunization data to the state, and then it takes another 24 hours for that data to be reflected on the public dashboard.
“It is possible” that to say that a “significant portion” of the coronavirus vaccines were on shelves could have been an exaggeration, Anton said. DSHS Commissioner John Hellerstedt first sent a letter to suppliers urging them to exhaust all available supply last week, when the extent of these shipping delays and technical errors was not fully known, she said.
“A lot of things (helped) make the numbers look lower than someone thought they should be,” said Anton.
Now, as the state moves into the second eligible group of Texans, the problem is supply. Anton said the state is currently unable to distribute additional doses of the vaccine as they wait for a weekly allowance from the federal government and sometimes do not know how many doses they will receive until the last minute. .
Houston
In Houston, hospitals that are part of the Texas Medical Center said they were quickly dispersing the vaccines they had received and were not keeping any in reserve.
Baylor St. Luke Medical Center reported on Wednesday that it had administered more than 95% of the 5,850 doses of the Pfizer vaccine it had on hand. Houston Methodists had dispersed 19,000 of the 30,000 doses as of Wednesday, when the hospital had just received about 10,000 of those doses a day earlier, a spokeswoman said.
“We began vaccinating these over 75s this week by contacting our patients who have used our facilities for the past two years,” Methodist spokeswoman Stephanie Asin said in a statement. “Then we’ll go to 65 and over.”
Bexar County
Bexar County currently has about 140,000 vaccine-eligible frontline health workers, but the county has only received about 50,000 doses. Another 40,000 doses are supposed to be on the way, but it’s still not enough to get everyone in phase 1A, which will remain the priority, said Colleen Bridger, acting director of the Metropolitan Health District of San Antonio.
As of Tuesday, more than 31,000 people in the county had been vaccinated, the number rising daily. On December 23, the county received a shipment of 1,100 vaccines and used them all within three days, Bridger said.
County Judge Nelson Wolff, who was vaccinated Wednesday, said the doses “are not on the shelf” at University Hospital, the county’s public district hospital. University of Health spokesperson Shelley Kofler said she received 6,475 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and used more than 6,000 on Wednesday.
University Health and CHRISTUS Health in San Antonio are preparing to start offering the vaccine to people in Phase 1B on a larger scale next week. A Methodist Healthcare spokeswoman said more details on extending the vaccination to people in phase 1B will be available in the coming days.
“In all of San Antonio, we haven’t quite gone through that first phase and in fact, we haven’t even received enough vaccines to do it,” said Bridger. “We are planning large-scale deployments of the vaccine when the supply becomes available and ships to us.”
Confusion abounds
HEB, one of the largest retailers in Texas offering the coronavirus vaccine, received approximately 28,000 doses of the vaccine on Christmas Eve. This allocation resulted in around 100 doses per store, and “these don’t last very long,” said Dya Campos, director of government affairs at HE-B.
The company has already exhausted that initial allocation, Campos said. Currently, HEB does not offer the vaccine to members of the Second Priority Group, as it is still working with eligible frontline workers and long-term care residents.
Once the pharmacy receives more doses, it will open an online calendar where people can sign up to receive the vaccine, she said.
“The problem with the 1B vaccination right now is the supply,” Campos said. “As soon as we receive more supplies, we can expand the group that we are currently vaccinating. … There is not a lot of time to waste in the process. It can be frustrating for the general public. It is a very complicated and rapidly changing process. “
Small local suppliers face similar problems. At 38th Street Pharmacy in Austin, co-owner Jeffrey Warnken said he received 200 doses of the vaccine on Monday – and he’s already nearly finished his allocation. The rest of the available plans are already slated to go into people’s arms by Monday.
“Do you want to send us more doses?” he said. “We are going to vaccinate these people, it’s great. But I don’t have one. All my doses have been counted.
And while members of the second prioritization group struggle to find the available doses, some members of Phase 1A say they are still being left on the sidelines.
Margo Rocha, a San Antonio resident who works as a surveillance technician at the university hospital, said she received her first dose of the vaccine about two weeks ago – but her husband, who works directly with patients in a gastroenterology practice, was told it was not doing so. qualify as a frontline worker to receive the vaccine.
“I’m glad I got him and I’m not glad he couldn’t,” Rocha said on Tuesday. “He’s ready to get it, but he doesn’t know who to ask other than (his) employer, but the employer is saying no. … If you cannot contact your employer, who do you contact? “
Tony Dasher, a professor at the Feik School of Pharmacy at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, said many community pharmacies were likely taken by surprise when the state suddenly cleared people in phase 1B for immunizations on Tuesday, which made it difficult for pharmacists. to coordinate the administration of the vaccine while managing their activities.
“The state needs to step up and ensure that there is good communication and that people know there will be an adequate supply of vaccines, and they need to get that vaccine supply into the community now, and no more. late, ”Dasher said.
“The pharmacy has really prepared for this and it is ready, but unfortunately there are other limiting factors that will lead to dissatisfaction at the end of the day,” he added. “I think pharmacies will do their part if the state does theirs.”
Anton, the spokesperson for DSHS, reiterated that with the supply still limited, members of Group 1B should regularly check with their primary care physicians and other providers to check availability.
The governor’s office, meanwhile, touted the state-wide effort to vaccinate Texans as quickly as possible, while doubling down on the claim that some providers may not be using them. vaccines provided to them.
“With new shipments arriving every week at no cost, the State of Texas is urging suppliers to quickly vaccinate as many people as possible from at-risk groups rather than those life-saving vaccines and drugs placed on the shelves,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in an email.
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