Can’t find a COVID vaccine? Consider a road trip
For Amber and Lennie Ambrose, their journey toward vaccination started a lot like an “oldschool phone tree.”
The Ambroses, who live in Oak Forest, received a link from Amber’s cousin in Jefferson County to book an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine sites in the counties bordering Louisiana had more doses than they had recipients, her family said.
“It cascaded from there,” said Amber Ambrose, 39.
With more vaccine supply flowing into Texas, the statewide mask mandate rollback and businesses reopening at 100 percent capacity, some Houstonians unable to get a COVID-19 vaccine close to home are making the drive two hours east to get their doses. More than 2.3 million people live in Houston, but the city and Texas Medical Center are able to administer only 232,000 doses a week.
And demand is only growing: Starting Monday, those 50 and older are now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine in Texas.
While Hardin, Orange and Jefferson counties are still prioritizing residents 65 and older, they’re now accepting vaccine appointments for anyone, even out-oftowners, according to county officials. While interest has dropped off from locals, they sought to keep their tens of thousands of doses from going to waste.
Dr. Jana Winberg, the Hardin County Health Authority, said people come from surrounding areas such as Houston to get their shot in Hardin County. But that doesn’t take away vaccines from county residents.
“We are still finding ways for people who want to get the shot to get in those slots,” she said.
Less than 24 hours after the Ambroses booked their appointments, they were on their way to Lumberton, a three-hour drive. The vaccine process went by so quickly that they were able to walk around downtown Beaumont that afternoon and drive back to Houston.
In the two weeks since the Ambroses’ first appointment, they’ve helped as many as 50 neighbors, co-workers and friends set up appointments in Southeast Texas.
“It’s better for as many of us as possible at work to get it so we don’t have any outbreaks,” said Lennie Ambrose, 44, who works at Saint Arnold Brewing Co.
The Ambroses were initially anxious about taking doses from the people who needed them. But it was better to sign an out-of-towner’s vaccination card than to toss a half-full vial in the trash, local officials said.
Low turnout
As of March 1, Hardin County officials opened registration to the public regardless of eligibility criteria, telling the Beaumont Enterprise that they had an “extremely low” turnout for vaccine appointments, County Judge Wayne McDaniel said.
The Hardin County Health Department manages Orange County’s vaccines, but both are part of the Southeast Texas Regional Emergency Operations Center vaccine distribution hub, Winberg said.
Divvying up the area’s vaccines between Jefferson, Hardin, Jasper, Newton and Orange counties depends on which location can give the shots in a timely fashion, she said.
Hardin County has fewer than 60,000 people, and neighboring Jasper County is smaller at 35,500, Winberg said. One week in February, the county received 300 doses and fewer than 100 people made appointments.
Rather than have the Moderna vaccines sit in refrigerators, Winberg said, they would prefer to bring doses to those who want them.
On March 6, Keri Brown was flabbergasted by her good fortune: Hardin and Orange counties had opened their vaccination sites to the general public, and the 42year-old had wrangled an appointment in Orange.
At the start of the pandemic, Brown was “somewhat obsessed” with checking the Texas Medical Center’s website for the latest virus case count, how many hospital beds were in use and the city’s surge capacity. She worried about how long the virus survived on surfaces and how effective masks really were. She even checked, and double-checked, her life insurance policies.
“Late last year, when we finally started receiving news about successful vaccines, my optimism started to grow,” she said.
Brown’s husband is 45 and qualified under the Texas Department of State Health Services’ 1B priority group, so he was able to get his vaccine in Houston. Two months after vaccines were first shipped to hospitals in Texas, Brown had yet to receive hers. In February, she joined a Facebook group called Vaccinate Houston Covid-19 Updates, which is where she learned about the other counties’ open registration.
Brown remembered the only other time she had driven through Orange County was in 2005. At the time, it looked like Hurricane Rita would directly hit Houston, so she and her husband packed up and drove through Orange to stay with family in Southwest Louisiana.
Sixteen years later, on March 9, Brown drove alone to Orange for her first dose. She said the needle prick felt like getting a flu shot. On the way back to her home on the west side of Houston, she stopped at Whataburger for a post-vaccination bite.
“Removing the Band-Aid was the only part that hurt,” she said. “I have half-joked that I feel like a yearlong weight is slowly being lifted from my shoulders.”
In Houston, residents have resigned themselves to signing up on multiple waitlists. Sebastian Skalany, 45, one of the Ambroses’ neighbors, checked with a half-dozen vaccine providers. Chris Frankel, 37, registered in February on the Houston Health Department’s and Harris County Public Health’s registries but did not receive a call, text or email.
Skalany lives just 10 minutes away from Delmar Stadium, where city officials operate a drive-thru COVID-19 vaccination site with United Memorial Medical Center. Instead, he made the three-hour round-trip drive to Beaumont on a weekday to get the shot.
“Everyone on my street has received their vaccines from Beaumont,” he said. To pay it forward, Skalany sent the registration links to his mother, sister and close friends.
Frankel, who works in the bar and restaurant industry, tried the neighborhood pharmacies: CVS, Walgreens, Walmart. “It was like trying to buy concert tickets; if you’re not up at 12 a.m. to get in that window, they will sell out,” Frankel said.
Eventually, Frankel lined up an appointment in Liberty County, 43 miles from downtown Houston on U.S. 90. He will return later this month for his second Pfizer shot. The first appointment was well-organized, not crowded and commenced quickly, he said.
And there were no demands for insurance, proof of an underlying medical condition or judgment for “being young.”
‘Privileged’ access
In Texas, about 10.8 million doses of the vaccine have been allocated, and 2.8 million Texans are now fully vaccinated, according to Chronicle data. In Harris County alone, 400,629 people have been fully vaccinated, though many have traveled elsewhere to do so.
Skalany knows he’s lucky to be in this position. “What about all the front-line individuals that can’t do that?” he said. “How are we getting vaccines to them? They’re the most vulnerable, and it seems the ones that are more privileged like me have access.”
For some, that means paying it forward by spreading the word to their social media networks and driving others to get the vaccine.
For others, such as the Ambroses, getting inoculated elsewhere means they can take their names off of vaccine waitlists in Houston, opening more spots for those who fall in Texas’ 1A-C criteria and can’t get around.
“A lot of people say it’s skipping the line. I’m like, ‘Well, if they’re going to throw away vaccine, nobody’s skipping anything,’ ” Amber Ambrose said. “Hopefully, we’re clearing the way for people here who don’t have as much flexibility to drive there.”