‘We don’t have enough vaccines for our community’: Austin Public Health calls for patience with deployment

Austin Public Health provided 18,427 vaccines to the community of Austin and Travis County on Thursday, according to APH Director Stephanie Hayden-Howard.

But one thing is for sure, she told a press conference, the APH does not have enough doses for everyone at the moment.

“We ask you to be patient with us,” she said.

Hayden-Howard said APH only received 1% of the doses needed to immunize the community. She said there were 129,438 people in Austin-Travis County alone who are 65 and older, an age group qualified to get the vaccine right now.

And as people rush to sign up for one of those limited doses, the APH phone lines and other COVID-related operations are overwhelmed, chief epidemiologist Janet Pichette said.

“Austin and Travis County have reached a point in our community where we’ve hit the perfect storm,” she says. “We are in the midst of a surge in all of our operations related to the COVID-19 response.”

Pichette said the city’s facilities for people who need a place to safely isolate themselves to prevent family members from getting sick are nearing capacity. The Austin Convention Center alternative care site now has 25 patients. APH is also seeing an increase in test requests right now, she said.

But the cases appear to be flattening, said Dr Mark Escott, interim health authority for Austin-Travis County.

“We’ve done a great job over the past two weeks to flatten the curve,” he said. “The curve continues to flatten. We’re seeing some decline in our hospital admissions and ICU numbers, so what you’re doing is good. “

The community cannot stop here, he said. People must continue to wear masks and social distances.

“We have to continue these protections and remain vigilant so that we can reduce the numbers and give ourselves more time for the vaccine to be available and to get it into the arms of our community,” he said.

Watch the press conference below:

The state has allocated its allocations from the federal government to vaccine suppliers across Texas. Last week, the Texas Department of State Health Services began assigning thousands of them to large-scale providers called “vaccination centers.” APH is one of them. He has been assigned 24,000 vaccines in the past two weeks. Small providers currently only receive a few hundred vaccines per week.

As a public health entity, APH says it focuses on people who don’t have health insurance or another provider available to them. But that doesn’t mean people with health insurance can’t get on the APH waiting list, Escott said on Friday. He said his advice for people eligible for the vaccine is to get on any waiting list they can find to increase their chances of getting the vaccine.

“Like we did with the testing, we wanted to remind people that if they have ways to get vaccinated or get tested outside of Austin Public Health, it helps to reserve vaccine resources for those who have no other options, ”he said. “But for sure people who have insurance can buy it, and we will provide the vaccine the best we can to whoever signs up.”

Vaccines currently authorized in the United States require two doses for complete protection. Escott said he expects the APH to be able to deliver the second dose to those who received their first APH in a timely manner.

“Part of the challenge that we have… is that we don’t have a shipping order that says it will arrive on that date,” he said. “We are confident that the state and the federal government are going to deliver what they say they are going to deliver.”

According to state guidelines, APH and other vaccine providers are prioritizing people 65 years of age and older and those with underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk for complications from COVID-19 . Escott said the reason behind this is that these groups are the most likely to be hospitalized and the most likely to die from the virus. Immunity within these groups will help remove the threat to currently overwhelmed hospital systems.

“I think it’s reasonable that by the time of March, maybe April, as we go through this group that is most at risk for hospitalization, that this threat of overwhelming the health care system could be in effect. big part resolved, ”Escott said.

This does not mean that the community can relax its precautions, he said. People under 65 can still develop complications from COVID and stress hospital systems.

“But that can be managed by masking and putting it away until June to give us more time to get other people vaccinated,” he said. “So again, I expect that around the time of March to April, we start to see a very different picture in terms of the threat to our infrastructure and the threat to our health care system.

Do you have any advice? Email Marisa Charpentier at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @marisacharp.

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