Vaccine offer to city manager raises questions about political favoritism
On Dec. 19, City Manager Erik Walsh received a call from Dr. Erika Gonzalez, an allergy and immunology specialist whose clinic was days away from receiving 500 doses of Moderna’s scarce COVID-19 vaccine.
Gonzalez, the politically connected chairwoman of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, wanted to know if Walsh would like a dose.
The city manager said no. “I said, ‘If you have additional (doses) at some point, then coordinate with Metro Health and we can make sure that first responders and those front-line employees are taken care of,’” recalled Walsh, 51.
“Personally, I believe that first responders and frontline employees and those that are exposed to the public as part of the job should be a higher priority,” Walsh continued. “I know I’m the city manager, but I also feel like it’s important to set the right tone from an organizational standpoint.”
Walsh’s instincts were in line with state requirements.
At the time of Gonzalez’s call, the state was limiting vaccine distribution to health care workers and residents of long-term-care facilities.
This week, those eligible to receive the vaccine in Texas expanded to anyone 65 years and older, pregnant womenandanyoneover the age of 16 with a pre-existing condition.
However, officials warned that Bexar County still lacks enough doses to vaccinate all of its firstphase recipients.
As the deadly pandemic worsens, Gonzalez’s decision to offer access to a top official not on the state’s priority list raises questions about political favoritism as health care providers strug
gle to administer limited doses of the vaccine to vulnerable populations.
Gonzalez’s practice, South Texas Allergy & Asthma Medical Professionals, is one of hundreds of registered COVID-19 vaccine providers in Texas that include hospitals, pharmacies and physician’s offices.
The state began receiving vaccines in mid-december through Operation warp Speed, the federal government’s public-private effort to develop and distribute the vaccines.
As of Wednesday, the state had distributed 678,925 doses to providers, but just 205,463 doses — 30 percent — had been administered, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported.
Trump administration officials
acknowledged Wednesday that the vaccine rollout was going too slowly.
In Bexar County, providers had received about 50,000 doses of the vaccine and vaccinated about 31,000 people through Tuesday — a fraction of the county’s 144,000 front-line workers.
Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger stressed the community’s focus should remain on its firstphase recipients: front-line medical workers such as hospital employees, EMS responders and long-term-care facility employees and residents.
“We’ve been allocated 90,000 doses, sothe rest of the doses, they are in the mail,” she said. “But this is important because it means that we’ve not yet received enough vaccinations for everybody in this first phase. We will continue to prioritize those individuals.”
Political leaders around the country have been given COVID-19
shots in public to show support for the historic vaccination effort. On Wednesday, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, 80, received his first of two required doses at University Hospital.
On the same day Gonzalez called Walsh — four days before her clinic received the 500 doses Dec. 23 — she also reached out to Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
“I missed a message from her,” Nirenberg said. “I’m not sure what it was about.”
Gonzalez administered a dose Wednesday of the Moderna vaccine to City Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia.
Rocha Garcia, 41, has lost seven family members to COVID-19. She said she has multiple underlying conditions. She was vaccinated along with her elderly parents.
“I have asthma and I have fibromyalgia syndrome,” she said. “Those are my underlying conditions. It’s also severe allergies, like
seasonal allergies. … I was fortunate to be able to get in there.”
Gonzalez acknowledged the state’s vaccine allocation plan.
“We’re required to follow the tier system that’s set by the CDC and the Texas Department of Health,” she said.
Asked about her call to Walsh, she argued that both the city manager and Nirenberg are essential workers who should receive vaccinations now.
“I think that they play very pivotal roles in our community,” Gonzalez said. “They’re exposing themselves on a daily basis and trying to make sure they run the operations of our city.”
She added that each vial of vaccine contains numerous doses that expire six hours after it is opened.
To avoid wasting any doses, she sometimes vaccinates people not on the state’s priority list if doses are available when she is “close to closing shop.”
“We’ve only done it a handful of times,” she said, declining to name anyonewho received a dose under those circumstances.
“I think the (state) health department is giving common-sense guidelines,” she added. “The health department wants us to vaccinate as quickly as possible.”
Nirenberg declined to comment on Gonzalez’s call to Walsh or vaccination of Rocha Garcia. But he called the state’s decentralized vaccination plan “very confusing.”
“It would be far easier on everyone if the (Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council) and Metro Health were the coordinating point for the vaccine administration rather than DSHS,” Nirenberg said .“Local communities have differing needs, and in our community it would be much easier to vaccinate effectively the front-line workers if there was a local coordinating point for the vaccine administration process.”