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Dallas County urging its residents to be patient for COVID-19 vaccine
The state is now allowing senior citizens and people with certain health conditions access to the COVID-19 vaccine. But Dallas County says it's not yet ready to distribute vaccines to the general public.
DALLAS - While the state of Texas is now allowing people over the age of 65 and people with high-risk health conditions to get the COVID-19 vaccine, the availability of the vaccine is still extremely limited in some areas.
Vaccine providers in Dallas County said they are still primarily focused on getting the vaccine to frontline health care workers, first responders and people at long-term care facilities.
LINK: Who is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in Texas
Health director Dr. Philip Huang said Dallas County residents likely won’t be able to line up for the vaccine like people in Tarrant County did on Wednesday any time soon.
"This has been a very fastly evolving situation. And also unfortunately there is still a very limited vaccine that’s available," he said. "We are not to the stage at our facility to take people calling us try to schedule for 1B. But we’re hopefully going to get to that. We want to get to that as soon as anybody but just want to make sure that expectations are understood that it’s really still very limited vaccine."
When Texas opened up the vaccine to people in Phase 1B, the state health director also declared that no vaccine should be kept in reserve.
Dr. Huang said that’s not happening at the Dallas County health department.
"We’re on track to use all of our allocation we think by tomorrow," he said. "So we received 1,200 doses. These are limited amounts. Some of the hospitals it’s a fraction of the total health care workers."
The city of Dallas received only 2,000 of the 5,000 doses requested for first responders.
Parkland released a statement Wednesday to emphasize, "it is not distributing COVID-19 vaccines to the general public at this time. We are vaccinating persons who meet criteria under category 1A. Next week, we will begin vaccinating a list of established Parkland patients who have been pre-identified as the most vulnerable should they contract COVID-19."
So the message for most people over 65 or with a high-risk condition in Dallas County is be patient.
"People can’t let up doing the other things that we know slow the spread down," Dr. Huang said.
Baylor Scott and White is also a vaccine provider. A spokesman for the hospital system said it is still working to vaccinate their healthcare workers but has set up a website that provides updates on when public vaccinations will begin.
LINK: Where to get a COVID-19 vaccine in Texas